Passatelli (Breadcrumb and Parmigiano Pasta in Broth)

Variations

• Passatelli asciutto: lifted out and dressed instead of served in broth — butter, a ragù, sea urchin or clams. Common on the Romagna coast. Cooked in salted water and the water discarded.
• A little flour: modern recipes add a spoonful or two to make it easier to handle. It breaks up less, and it moves that much closer to being an ordinary noodle.
• The cheese-to-crumb ratio: 1:1 is standard, and around Pesaro and Urbino they go heavier on the cheese. More cheese means a slacker mass, so bring it back with crumbs.
• The broth: chicken is standard, though a brodo misto with beef in it is common. In Romagna it is Christmas and Easter food.
• Against spätzle: both are pressed through holes, but spätzle is a flour-and-egg batter with gluten in it, boiled in salted water, drained and tossed in butter. Here pressing is not a convenience but the only option — there is no dough to roll and cut.
• The name comes from passare, to pass through. The proper tool is a ferro dei passatelli.

Tips

• With no flour in it, the only thing holding it together is egg. Every noodle on this site is held by one of two things. Kalguksu, Lanzhou lamian, orecchiette and daoxiaomian are held by gluten; khanom chin, cheung fun and yam wun sen by gelatinised starch. Passatelli has neither. The crumbs have already been baked, so they cannot build a new network, and the cheese is dry protein. What is left is egg, and egg sets with heat (cooking eggs).
• Which is why it cannot be made ahead. Boiled in water and drained it takes up water and falls apart. Pressed over the pot and given two minutes is the condition of the dish.
• Do not let the broth boil. At a rolling boil the strands knock together and break, and what breaks off clouds the broth. Stocks and broth's rule matters twice as much here, because the broth is half the dish and there is nowhere to hide a cloudy one.
• Season the broth completely. Cooking noodles says salted water is your only chance to season a noodle. Here the salted water is the broth, so an underseasoned broth gives you underseasoned pasta. Pasta e fagioli makes the same demand for the same reason.
• The crumbs must be dry. Fresh breadcrumbs carry water, which slackens the mass and makes it dissolve in the pot. Dry the crumb of a white loaf slowly, grind it fine and sieve it. The other dishes here that use dry bread — umm ali, gazpacho, vepřo knedlo zelo — all want the bread to drink the liquid. Here bread drinking the liquid is the failure.
• Grate the Parmigiano yourself. Pre-grated cheese carries anti-caking starch and gives a mealy mass. A 24-month wheel brings enough salt and savour that almost no extra salt is needed.
• Crumbly, add egg; slack, add cheese. Never water. Water is that much more for the broth to pull back out.
• A potato ricer is fine. 4-5mm holes are right. With a sieve, push it through with the back of a spoon.