Orecchiette

Dragged flat with a knife and turned inside out over the thumb.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 400 g fine semolina flour
• 190 ml warm water
• 1.5 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Make a firm semolina dough, knead 15 minutes, and rest it an hour. It must stay covered: a skin forms in minutes and dry dough will not turn.
2. Roll a rope 1 cm thick and cut 1 cm pieces.
3. DRAG EACH PIECE ACROSS THE BOARD WITH A BLUNT KNIFE, pressing and pulling towards you, so it flattens and curls over the blade into a shallow cup.
4. NOW TURN IT INSIDE OUT OVER YOUR THUMB. That second move is the whole shape — it leaves a thin domed middle and a thicker rolled rim, so the two cook to different textures in one bite.
5. Without the inversion you have a cavatello, which is a different pasta made with the same two ingredients and the first half of the same motion.
6. The rough semolina surface is deliberate: it is what lets broccoli or cime di rapa cling.
7. Dry on a cloth an hour and boil 8 to 10 minutes.

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