Fileja

Eggless pasta rolled round a thin rod into a spiral tube, dressed with nduja.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pecorino whose rennet the source does not name, pork.

Ingredients

Pasta

• 400 g fine semolina flour
• 200 ml warm water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

To dress

• 100 g nduja
• 400 g passata
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 60 g pecorino, to serve

Method

1. Mix the semolina, water and salt, knead 10 minutes to a firm dough, and rest 30.
2. Roll pieces into ropes as thick as a pencil and cut them into 8 cm lengths.
3. Lay a thin rod on each piece at an angle — a knitting needle, a bicycle spoke, a length of dried grass stem. ROLL THE DOUGH AROUND THE ROD under your palm with a long stroke, so it wraps into a spiral.
4. Slide the rod out. The pasta keeps the hollow and the spiral seam, which is the whole design: sauce goes inside as well as outside.
5. Work on wood and keep the dough slightly dry. A tacky dough glues itself to the rod and will not come off whole.
6. Spread them on a floured cloth. They can dry for days.
7. For the sauce, cook the onion in the oil 8 minutes, break the nduja in and stir until it melts into the oil, then add the passata and simmer 20 minutes.
8. Boil the fileja 7 minutes, drain, and turn through the sauce with pecorino.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes