Fregola is a durum pasta from Sardinia, closely related in shape and texture to moghrabieh and used like cous-cous as an anchor within larger dishes or salads. Fregola is toasted, with a toothy bite, and goes especially well with seafood such as a recent paella-like...
Busiate, from Sicily, is a corkscrew shaped pasta. The other night I put together a batch using Tumminia flour, adapted by making my own Grano Arso (Burned wheat), a speciality of Puglia. Following southern Italian tradition, I used only water, no eggs. The corkscrew...
Shopping at the Union Square Green Market,I saw some beautiful German butterball potatoes from the Mountain Sweet Berry Farm. Similar to starchy yellow potatoes like Yukon gold, they sang to me "turn us into gnocchi." So I did, with my inspiration coming from...
My first lessons in making potato gnocchi were with my brother. He followed a formula that I think was from Auguste Escoffier. Ever since, I've loved the puffy dumpling(really a pasta) that marries well with sauce and garnishes, whether tomato sauce or...
I love pasta. Recently tried a pasta dish known as ricotta cavatelli with broccoli pesto and salami. It sounded appetizing, but ended up a disappointment. It was just standard dry cavatelli, with a tasteless green emulsion of broccoli topped with cold ricotta and...
As a by-product to trying grano arso in bread, I also used it in orecchiette, the ear shaped semolina and water pasta. Initially I tried shaping with my thumb. That's a bit time consuming. I found it faster to use a knife. It consists of a basic scrape across the...
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