Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/395149
Food ne 158 nshoremag.com November 2014 photographs by lauren poussard A Fare Scene The North Shore now boasts a hearty selection of alternative menus for those with specific dietary needs. By Alexandra Pecci Done Deal 62's chef Bettencourt started offering gluten-free pasta earlier this year. ntonio bettencourt resisted making gluten- free pasta for a long time. As the chef and owner of the acclaimed 62 Restaurant & Wine Bar in Salem, he couldn't add just anything to his trat- toria's menu, especially when expertly crafted handmade pastas were at its heart. In his opinion, the gluten-free pastas that his wife sometimes ate at home were poor substitutions for the real thing, made with corn or rice and lacking pasta's requisite flavor and al dente bite. "That's not pasta," Bettencourt says. Plus, he didn't want to order premade pasta anyhow, whether it was gluten-free or not. "I don't want to buy anything here. I want to make everything in- house...if we buy stuff premade, we're not really being chefs." So Bettencourt resisted, even though his wife, who avoids gluten because of rheumatoid arthritis, had long pressed him to create gluten-free pasta. It wasn't until he heard of Cup4Cup, a brand of chef-developed and -endorsed gluten-free flour that claims to be an exact "cup for cup" substitute for wheat flour, that he de- cided to try developing a gluten-free pasta for 62. It took a lot of tinkering—despite its moniker, Cup4Cup wasn't quite exact when it came to pasta making—and hours of research, but eventually, Bettencourt came up with a recipe that he was proud of, and one he added to his menu earlier this year. He says he did gluten-free pasta, and did it right.