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Flavors: Yellowstone Pasta Company

Henry Kennah, owner of Yellowstone Pasta Company holds a tray of freshly extruded spaghetti pasta.
Stella Fong
Henry Kennah, owner of Yellowstone Pasta Company holds a tray of freshly extruded spaghetti pasta.

When wheat is the largest crop grown under the Big Sky, in a workspace, the size of a garage, on Broadwater Avenue in Billings, Henry Kennah makes homemade and hand cut pasta using Montana durum wheat semolina. His company, Yellowstone Pasta Company supplies local restaurants such as Walkers Grill and the Granary as well as the Yellowstone and Hilands country clubs. For retail customers, his pasta can be found at the Hesper West End Farmers Market and at the Billings downtown Yellowstone Farmers Market in the summer. In Midtown, Town and Country also carries the 15 different shapes of pasta he makes.

Yellowstone Pasta Company pasta is available at Town and Country in Billings and sold at the Hesper West End Farmers Market and at the Yellowstone Farmers Market in the summer.
Stella Fong
Yellowstone Pasta Company pasta is available at Town and Country in Billings and sold at the Hesper West End Farmers Market and at the Yellowstone Farmers Market in the summer.

Kennah started working in restaurants at the age of 17 as a dishwasher. “I didn’t come from a family where we ate out at any place fancy.” He admits have a revelation when the sous chef passed him a plate of shrimp scampi. “I fell in love with food right there. I was like, ‘oh my gosh,’ food can taste like this?”

“I worked at Jake’s for a number of years, and then I actually met Alan Sparbo.” He followed him to the Beanery and then to the Granary. He also stepped into the kitchens at the Windmill and Commons.

In the early 2000s, the Food Network was the established source for learning about cooking and baking. For Kennah, he found the Discovery Channel and its offering of culinary shows. “I would just binge watch that stuff as much as I possibly could. And then I started collecting cookbooks and I just started studying. I was fortunate enough to work with people in the industry that fostered my creativity and my exploration of food.”

“I’ve been making pasta for a long time. Pasta was one of the first things I could figured out young in my career. It was one thing that I knew that I could make from scratch in my home.”

At Yellowstone Pasta Company, spaghetti is made on this day with Montana durum wheat semolina to be extruded from a Emiliomiti machine that kneads and extrudes the dough. The strands of noodles are twisted into a nest to be then packaged for sale.
Stella Fong
At Yellowstone Pasta Company, spaghetti is made on this day with Montana durum wheat semolina to be extruded from a Emiliomiti machine that kneads and extrudes the dough. The strands of noodles are twisted into a nest to be then packaged for sale.

Eventually Kennah discovered that the long hours he was working did not fit his personal life. “And so we had three kids. We had three under three for an entire year. So we had our daughter, Lucy, and then we had twins.”

His time as an at home dad gave him a chance to consider opening his own business. “I was hand rolling pasta for a long time, and the initial thought of staring a pasta company or maybe even a small little bistro that was going to serve pasta, I realized that it wasn’t going to be sustainable to hand roll enough pasta.” The labor required would be challenging.

He made a trip out to San Francisco to learn about the Pastabiz extruder machine. The machine kneaded and extruded the dough which made the process much easier.

The use of bronze dies to extrude his pasta “puts this texture on the outside of the dough and so that whatever sauce that you pair with it, it just clings to it.” Extruded pasta is more robust than delicate hand rolled pasta.

Kennah uses Montana durum wheat semolina for his pasta. He sources the coarser grain flour from General Mills in Great Falls.

Executive Chef Nick Steen Gullings finishes his dish of pesto, shrimp and artichoke hearts made with fresh Yellowstone Pasta Company linguini.
Stella Fong
Executive Chef Nick Steen Gullings finishes his dish of pesto, shrimp and artichoke hearts made with fresh Yellowstone Pasta Company linguini.

According to Dr. Mike Giroux, professor of plant genetics, durum breeder, and department head of plant sciences and plant pathology at MSU Bozeman, “There is both red and white winter and spring wheat, where Montana only grows red spring and winter wheat. But when you say durum, people mean only durum, because there isn’t any winter durum. And all durum is yellow in seed color.”

Semolina is often times confused with cornmeal. “So the center of the seed, the endosperm, is crushed. And for semolina, which comes from durum wheat, you end up with larger particles because the seeds are harder than for other wheats where you get some small particles for flour release. So why the preferences for yellow pasta and white bread. People traditionally like yellowish pasta.”

In the state of Montana, Giroux says, “we select all of our spring and winter wheat to have high gluten strength because that makes for a big loaf of bread. And that also is true for semolina. We want high gluten strength so that we have firm pasta.”

Fresh pasta from the Yellowstone Pasta Company easily soaks up the sauces it is mixed with. Chef Nick Steen Gullings created this dish of pesto with shrimp and artichoke hearts garnished with fresh shaved parmesan cheese.
Stella Fong
Fresh pasta from the Yellowstone Pasta Company easily soaks up the sauces it is mixed with. Chef Nick Steen Gullings created this dish of pesto with shrimp and artichoke hearts garnished with fresh shaved parmesan cheese.

According to Executive Nick Steen Gullings of Walkers Grill and Bin 119, he recommends cooking pasta in salted water. “It should taste like the ocean,” he states. For fresh pasta, “It takes two or three minutes in boiling water.” Fresh pasta should be toothsome in texture while dried pasta can be cooked to be firmer.

The pasta should be a little chewy but “it shouldn’t break when you’re moving it,” Gullings advises.

Here under the Big Sky, with wheat grown in the state, Yellowstone Pasta Company is demonstrating that it is only natural that good pasta can be made here.

Stella Fong shares her personal love of food and wine through her cooking classes and wine seminars as well as through her contributions to Yellowstone Valley Woman, and Last Best News and The Last Best Plates blogs. Her first book, Historic Restaurants of Billings hit the shelves in November of 2015 with Billings Food available in the summer of 2016. After receiving her Certified Wine Professional certification from the Culinary Institute of America with the assistance of a Robert Parker Scholarship for continuing studies, she has taught the Wine Studies programs for Montana State University Billings Wine and Food Festival since 2008. She has instructed on the West Coast for cooking schools such as Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, Macy’s Cellars, and Gelsons, and in Billings, at the Billings Depot, Copper Colander, Wellness Center, the YMCA and the YWCA. Locally she has collaborated with Raghavan Iyer and Christy Rost in teaching classes.