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A vitamin and protein packed pasta recipe

At Due we are committed to bringing you the most delicious pasta dishes that value your health. We work  hard to ensure that even our sauces will provide you with your body's nutritional needs. Our improved pasta formula, together with our sauces will satisfy the pickiest of the eaters without leaving anyone feeling guilty.

Try this recipe at home! Served with our improved pasta it contains 760 cal, 35 grams of proteins, 13 g of fibers and 50% of the daily recommended value of Vitamins A, 120% of the vitamin C and 130% of Vitamin K together with an incredible array  of minerals like Calcium , Iron, Manganese and Potassium. How about the "bad guys"? Only 25 g of fat with merely 3% of the recommended daily value of Cholesterol,  and only 32 % of the recommended Carbs! Not bad for a delicious pasta dish!


Serves 4 people (list of the ingredients at the end)

  1. Place a big pot of water on the stove, add salt and bring to the boil.
  2. Add the olive oil to a sauce pan on a medium heat. When the oil is hot add the sausage (skin removed), using a fork to separate the minced meat. Allow the fat to render and the meat to take on a nice golden color (about 1o minutes).
  3. Meanwhile, minced the garlic and prepare the leeks. Halve the white part of the leek length wise and unrolled to obtain a small sheet. Then, cut the sheets into long thin strips to form "leek spaghetti".
  4. Remove the florets from the broccoli, halve each floret and set aside.  Minced the stalks of the broccoli.
  5. When the meat is nice golden brown, remove it with a slotted spoon and place it on the side. Discard half of the fat from the pan.
  6. Place the leek strips and the minced broccoli stalks in the pan and stir until become tender (about five minutes). Add the garlic, chilly flakes to your liking and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 2 minutes more and then return the meat in the pan together with the vegetables.
  7. Add the wine and deglaze the bottom of the pan. Once the alcohol has evaporated,  add the bay leaves and cover with a lid.
  8. Blanch the broccoli florets in boiling water for two minutes and then shock in ice cold water.
  9. Place half of the broccoli in the pan with the leek and sausage and cook thoroughly (or for about 15 minutes). Reserve the other half of the florets.
  10. Place the pine nuts in a 150 ºC oven (300 ºF) to toast for 5 minutes. As long as they are laid out evenly they do not need to be turned.
  11. Put the spaghetti in the boiling water and gently stir to prevent sticking.
  12. When the pasta is al dente, remove it from the water and toss it together with the sauce. Add the remaining broccoli florets and the parmesan cheese and toss vigorously. If it is too dry add some pasta cooking water.
  13. To serve, divide the pasta among four warm plates and sprinkle with toasted pine nuts.

LET US KNOW YOUR END RESULTS !!!

Filippo

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Ingredients:

Spaghetti, 400g  (3.5 oz.)

Tuscanian Pork Sausage, 200g  (7 oz.)

Garlic (minced), 20g  (3/4 oz.)

Leek (white part), 350g  (12 oz.)

Broccoli, 600g  (21 oz.)

Dry White Wine, 130g   (1/2 cup)

Parmesan cheese, 60g   (2 oz.)

Pine nuts, 20g   (3/4 oz.)

EVO, 30g   (1 oz.)

Black pepper

Chilly Flakes

Salt

Bay leaves

MIT's First Pasta Start-up

When it comes to startup ecosystem and resources for entrepreneurs, it's really hard to beat MIT. And as a MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management, I had full access to this extraordinary ecosystem for almost two years.

Entrepreneurial coursework is just the beginning. We can meet with professors, some of which are global experts in their fields, for consultations pretty much anytime. We have a dedicated working space, the MIT Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, where to meet with fellow entrepreneurs from the MIT community and provide each other's feedback and encouragement. Entrepreneurs-in-residence offer us mentorship, support, and access to a broad network of industry contacts. Business Plan competitions, Mixers, Conferences happen almost every day. The beauty of this environment goes beyond the MIT campus. In the Kendall Square area, a short walk from Sloan, you can find the offices of hundreds of startups and of some of the best VC firms in the country.

MIT had a major role in the development of dueminuti, and we are really proud to be MIT's first pasta startup. The first pitch ever of the dueminuti concept happened in 2014 in a Sloan class, Prof. Ed Roberts' Introduction To Technological Entrepreneurship. Our first business plan was built on an Excel template from the Trust Center. I can't even remember how many of my classmates have provided me feedback and helped me develop our idea further.

This is my last semester at MIT and the support we're getting from this community doesn't stop to surprise me. A team of 5 students from a Branding class is helping us to engage with customers and to develop our strategic positioning. A team from another class, Entrepreneurial Strategy, is giving us strategic advice. Trust Center's EIR Trish Cotter is connecting us with many industry leaders to build a board of advisors.

And, last but not least, we're semi-finalist in the "MIT 100K Competition", one of the largest and most famous business plan competitions in the world!

We're working very hard to bring dueminuti to the market very soon. It's an exciting time here at MIT!

Davide
100k

Healthy Fettuccine with Black Norcia truffle

The day before departing for Seattle I decided to treat my family, in particular my father and my wife as they are real truffle lovers. “Fettuccine with Black Truffle of Norcia” was my way to say thank you to my family. Of course it was also an opportunity for me to test another innovative pasta formula with some picky eaters and a way to combine everything that I learned through my research in the previous month.

My father is gluten intolerant so I had to find a way to reduce gluten in the pasta. After various experiments I decided to stick with an ancient grain from Tuscany (2000 years old seeds have been found in the Tombs of Etruscans, a population that was living in central Italy before the Romans) with lower gluten content compared to modern varieties of wheat and an incredible nutty and sweet aroma, Quinoa flour and Teff flour. I sourced the best eggs I could find (I just asked my dad whether the hens laid any eggs that day and he returned with six still-warm eggs). The perfectly balanced olive oil from my garden was ideal, despite not containing the prized peppery flavor typical of the Tuscan olive oil produced in the Chianti region, as it does not overpower the flavors of the pasta.

The traditional proportion for an egg dough is one egg for every 100 g of flour. However, at Dueminuti we are committed to bringing you only the best of the Italian tradition. So in developing the final egg dough recipe, I kept track of the protein, fat, carbs and vitamins content of each ingredient. The scientist in me took charge and with the help of excel and a scale, I finally arrived, after a few attempts, at the perfect nutritionally balanced pasta recipe. I experimented with different flours, egg yolk and egg white combinations thinking about how the proteins of the egg white and the fats of the egg yolk affect the structure and texture of the pasta. In the end, a modern recipe that reproduces the silkiness and lightness of the traditional pasta recipe was born. The new recipe is derive from the Italian tradition not forgetting my grandmother’s lessons and the wisdom of all the grandmothers of Italy. Making a well in the flour with the fist, breaking the eggs inside the well, slowly incorporating the eggs with flours and finally kneading the dough with the palms of the hands and dancing with the dough using the whole upper body is what traditional pasta making is all about. My innovative egg dough follows exactly the same procedure but I used the scale to be sure that the ingredients are in the exact proportion.

The result was stunning. The dough sheet I made that day was one of the most fragrant I had ever came across. The color was vibrant, the texture was very light but with a lovely bite at the end, and the flavor was unmatched. The sweater and nuttier flavor of the ancient wheat grain perfectly masked the somewhat metallic taste of the Quinoa flour, the Teff imparts a nice yellow hue and added a bit of nuttiness to the flavor. Free range fresh eggs from my garden played a huge difference as well, which is why at dueminuti we are committed to using only the best eggs we can find.
The pasta cooks in thirty seconds and it did not lose a bit of its quality while sitting in the pan for the routine pictures,  and not even after the five minutes I spent trying to gather the family to the table as they were too busy playing with my six-month old nephew.

I personally cannot wait to bring the products we are developing at dueminuti to Seattle. We will come soon! Stay tuned!

Filippo

it..

The freshest egg ever.. the shell was still wet when we collect it..

Paper thin sheet of pasta dough.

Fettucine on the making.

Fettucine on the making.

Lunch is almost ready.

Lunch is almost ready.

The Italian way to a great dish

After having finish my PhD in January I took more flights than ever before in my life. Literally it was a flight a week: Seattle, Seoul, Seattle, Beijing, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur... recording a TV cooking show, setting up dueminuti, brushing up the remaining PhD work, visiting my Malaysian family… it was thrilling and exhausting.  I needed some time to stop and reflect. I had a chance to do that in March, when I spent 3 weeks in the comfort of my parent's house in Tuscany, with my wife Janet and my family all reunited again. I had to go undergo a small surgery and I took the chance of the forced relax (aka convalescence) to rediscover my culture: I talked about food with whoever I met. The older, the better.

I took cooking classes from my grandmother as a way to understand classic Italian food... and of course to get some quality time with nonna :). She is certainly not an ordinary teacher and often doesn't know why things are done in a certain way, but I could see in her methods the wisdom of centuries of knowledge. Dinners with my uncles family and my mom's untie where others priceless moment of culinary wisdom exchange.

My wife and I went to discover the Umbria region. Our plan: to taste as many traditional food of the region as we could. Coratina (innards of the lamb slow cooked on a wood fire), Castellucio Lentils, Prosciutto DOP of Norcia, Black Truffle of Norcia, Pork Liver Sausage, Roveja, grilled lamb and the finest ricotta I have ever tasted in my life. We talked with the chef of each restaurant we had the pleasure to dine at, it was definitively a fantastic experience. A truly unforgettable memory was a meal in a restaurant in the small town of Castelluccio, an old borgo at 1400 m above sea level that surmounted a plain famous in the word for lentils. Everything we tasted was speaking of that country side. Dishes were so simple and at the same time so tasteful that you could almost feel the farmers' energy behind each produce. Ricotta was of such a lightness that it was a blessing. The chef was definitively one of the best chef I ever met. There was no trace of her in her dishes: her best skill, a rare one among chefs, was to respect each ingredient, and let it shine for itself. I talked to her for quite a bit and I will never forget that the most common sentence she used was "I did not do anything special to that". She told me where each ingredient was coming from, the story of each farmer behind a particular item and how every product would fit in her cuisine.

Taking only the best ingredient was her secret, respecting them was her skill. "The greatest dishes are very simple" used to say legendary chef Auguste Escoffier about 100 years ago. We couldn't agree more.

Filippo

 

 

The desk I set up as working space in my parent's garden: the perfect place where to think.

 

Sunset from my hometown Castle.

 

An early breakfast in my parent's house porch. A view that gave me new energy everyday.

Making bread has always been my way to recharge the batteries but making bread for my family in the wood fire oven brought everything to a new level.

Visiting the local butcher shop to order unusual meat part like sweetbread and spinal bone marrow.

Nonna's wisdom..her way to make Tuscanian meat ragu'.

A simple dish that left me speechless, The cheeses arranged in a dubious presentation were simply stunning, the pairing with a Red wine from the Sportoletti winery in Spello was sublime.

A simple dish that left me speechless, The cheeses arranged in a dubious presentation were simply stunning, the pairing with the red wine from the Sportoletti winery in Spello was sublime.

A view of the Castelluccio's plain where the most amazing lentils are grown.

A view of the Castelluccio's plain where the most amazing lentils are grown.

The town of Castelluccio view from the fields

The town of Castelluccio view from the fields below.