Pasta Mollicata

Toasted breadcrumbs standing in for cheese, with no vegetable in it at all.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 200 g stale coarse bread, crusts off, torn to crumbs
• 400 g spaghetti or linguine
• 6 anchovy fillets
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 dried chilli
• 7 tablespoons olive oil
• a handful of parsley
• 1.5 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Tear the bread into uneven crumbs rather than blitzing it. Uneven is what gives some crunch and some softness.
2. TOAST THE CRUMBS IN A SEPARATE DRY PAN with two spoons of the oil, stirring, for 6 to 8 minutes until deep gold. They go from pale to burnt in about thirty seconds at the end, so stay with them. Tip them out of the pan at once.
3. In another pan, warm the rest of the oil with the garlic and chilli and melt the anchovies in.
4. Cook the pasta and finish it in the anchovy oil with a ladle of its water.
5. THERE IS NO VEGETABLE AND NO CHEESE IN THIS. The toasted crumbs are the texture AND the stand-in for the cheese nobody could afford — adding parmesan gives you a decent dish with the point taken out of it.
6. Add most of the crumbs off the heat, toss, and scatter the rest with the parsley on top.

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