Photo: Bonniebartilomo · CC BY-SA 4.0
Orecchiette (Hand-Dragged Pasta with Turnip Tops)
A pasta from Puglia made one piece at a time from durum semolina and water, with no egg. A rope of dough is cut into cubes, each cube dragged across the board with a knife and then turned inside out over a thumb — and the dragging leaves the inside rough. That roughness is the point: the sauce that always goes with it is nothing but olive oil and boiled turnip tops, with no body at all, so the only thing holding it is the surface.
Ingredients
- The dough (serves 4)
- durum semolina · semola rimacinata, the finer grind, is easier to handle300 g
- warm water · half the weight of the flour; add it gradually150 ml
- salt1 tsp
- Cime di rapa
- turnip tops · broccolini, rapini or kale if you cannot get them600 g
- extra virgin olive oil60 ml
- garlic · lightly crushed3 cloves
- anchovy fillets · melted into the oil4
- dried chilli1
- To finish
- breadcrumbs · fried in oil; the Puglian finish, in place of cheese40 g
- pecorino · optional30 g
Steps
- ⏲ 10 min
Mix the salt into the semolina and add the warm water a little at a time, then knead hard for 8-10 minutes. With no egg it fights you at first and comes smooth if you keep going (dough and gluten).
- ⏲ 30 min
Wrap it and rest 30 minutes. Semolina is coarse and takes time to hydrate, and the rest is what lets it be rolled.
- ⏲ 10 min
Take a piece at a time and roll it into a rope the thickness of a finger, keeping the rest covered.
- ⏲ 10 min
Cut the rope into 1cm cubes. Press one with the tip of a blunt knife and drag it towards you. The cube curls over into a shell.
- ⏲ 15 min
Turn the curl inside out over your thumb. That gives the ear: thin in the middle, thick at the rim. The dragged face is now on the outside, and that rough face is what holds sauce.
- ⏲ 30 min
Lay them out on a semolina-dusted tray, not touching, and let the surface dry for thirty minutes to an hour.
- ⏲ 12 min
Boil the turnip tops in salted water for 3 minutes and lift them out. Cook the orecchiette in the same water for 10-12 minutes — thick and eggless, they take longer than dried pasta (cooking noodles).
- ⏲ 5 min
In a pan, warm the oil with the garlic, anchovies and chilli over low heat until the anchovies melt. Add the greens and toss.
- ⏲ 3 min
Lift the pasta straight into the pan with two or three tablespoons of the cooking water and toss hard. Finish with the fried breadcrumbs.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Scattarisciate: with tomato and grated ricotta salata.
- With sausage: Italian sausage meat crumbled in and cooked with the greens.
- Stacchioddi / recchietedde: the Salento names and shapes, a little more elongated.
- With some plain flour: half semolina and half strong white makes a far friendlier dough. It also makes a smoother surface, and less sauce clings to it.
- Not dried shop-bought: factory orecchiette have the shape but an extruded, smooth surface, which loses half the point of the dish.
Tips
- The rough surface is the objective. Cooking noodles says surface starch is the glue. Orecchiette adds mechanical roughness on top of it: the drag mark from the knife stays on the pasta, and sauce clings to it without needing any body. Cime di rapa is olive oil and boiled greens — a sauce with nothing to hold on with.
- It is the fifth way to shape a noodle here. Kalguksu rolls and cuts, Lanzhou lamian folds and pulls, spätzle scrapes through holes, khanom chin extrudes. Orecchiette are turned one at a time by hand, and it is the only one a machine cannot imitate.
- There is no egg. Northern fresh pasta is enriched with yolk and is tender; this is semolina and water, so it is firm and chewy and holds together in the pot — which is also why it takes over ten minutes.
- Why it is turned over the thumb. Inverting it makes the centre thin and the rim thick, so one piece has two textures: the middle cooks through while the rim stays chewy.
- Dry the surface only. Half an hour is enough. Dried right through, they take far longer to cook and crack.
- Breadcrumbs take the place of cheese. A poor-kitchen finish from Puglia, and the crunch suits the dish better than cheese does.
- The first ones you make will be thick and ugly. That is normal. Uneven thickness means uneven cooking, so until your hands learn it, make them slightly large and even rather than small and varied.
The basics behind this dish
- Cooking Noodles: Salt, Starch, and Whether to RinseWhy the water is salted, why oil in it is a mistake, and the actual rule for which noodles get rinsed and which never do.
- Dough and Gluten: When to Build It and When to Avoid ItThe same flour and water becomes a dumpling wrapper or a tender pancake. The difference is whether you built gluten or avoided it — and kneading and resting do different jobs.
- Why Sauces Split: Emulsions and Pan SaucesA cream sauce breaking and a carbonara scrambling are the same failure. Temperature and emulsifiers — plus how to bring a split sauce back.
More of the same kind
More from this country
Sign in to edit.
AI-drafted, editor-reviewed · edits: 0 ·Edit history
https://cookiki.com/en/r/orecchiette · cookiki · User contributions are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.