Tumact me Tulëz

Arbëreshë tagliatelle under pounded walnuts and toasted crumbs, with no cheese.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg.

Ingredients

• 300 g plain flour and 3 eggs, for the pasta
• 200 g walnuts
• 120 g coarse breadcrumbs
• 2 garlic cloves
• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• black pepper

Method

1. This is an Arbëreshë dish — the Albanian-speaking villages of Calabria and Basilicata — and the name is Albanian, not Italian.
2. Make an egg pasta, roll it thin and cut wide tagliatelle.
3. POUND THE WALNUTS IN A MORTAR WITH THE GARLIC AND SALT to a coarse rubble, not a smooth paste and not a powder. Blitzed, they turn to oily butter and the dish loses its texture entirely.
4. Toast the breadcrumbs in two spoons of the oil until deep gold, and tip them out at once.
5. Boil the pasta, drain it, and dress it with the remaining raw oil and a little pasta water.
6. SCATTER THE POUNDED WALNUTS AND THE CRUMBS OVER AT THE TABLE, not in the pan. Both go soft the moment they sit in a warm pan, and the whole point is the crunch against the pasta.
7. No cheese. The walnuts are the richness.

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