Orecchiette (“little ears”) on a Sunday…

Roger was grading all day Sunday so before heading off to the studio I decided to make orecchiette for our dinner.  I saw it a while back on Francesca’s blog and Sunday was the day.  Of course Francesca is Italian and I’m not but…I gave it a whirl.  Francesca used her grandmother’s recipe, but I turned to Marcella Hazan:

1 cup semolina (preferably the Italian kind called semolino)

2 cup all-purpose flour [I HAVE done this with whole wheat to good effect]

1/2 tsp salt

up to 1 cup lukewarm water

The recipe calls for combining dry ingredients on a bread board and making a well for the water.  Non-Italian cheater that I am I did it in the cuisinart with the dough blade…

It isn’t a sticky dough–very easy to handle.  Cut off a section about as big as a lemon (a little less than a quarter of the total dough ball) and roll it into a sausage like cylinder about 3/4 of an inch thick

cut the coil in disks (“1/16th “) thick.  I can’t quite manage that so

The take each disk of dough, cup it in the center of your palm and, with a rotary pressure of the thumb of your other hand, make a depression in the center of the disk flattening and widening the disk.  This sounds lengthy but really is just a quick twist.

I made then in the morning and cooked them for dinner.  You can also dry them and keep up to a month, though the fun of fresh pasta is, well, fresh pasta!

The traditional Apulian recipe calls for broccoli florets and red pepper flakes (maybe with anchovies), but I was trying to avoid the grocery and use what I had on hand so I did garlic, pepper flakes, chicken sausage and peas.

This pasta cooks longer than fresh egg pasta, but that is to say NOT long.  Bring a big pan of salted water to boil, add pasta and cook for 10-20 seconds after that water returns to a boil–NO MORE!!!  Garnish with fresh grated romano cheese.  YUM!!!!!!  (Note:  I cooked pasta, finished the stir-fry and then added the pasta to the pan for a quick warm up.)