For anyone who grew up eating semolina pudding served with a bleeding blob of jam, there is a nostalgic (or traumatic) moment when making ears of pasta, known as orecchiette. It is when, having poured the warm water into the volcano crater of flour, you begin pinching the two together and the smell released is the same as that which rose from the bowl in the school dining room in 1988, a mix – and it has taken me a while to pin this down – of wood chippings, malt, tobacco, almond and custard. The same smell rushes up when you pour boiling water on a pile of instant couscous or simmer Turkish semolina halva.
All of these things – pasta flour, couscous, semolina – are made from the same thing: triticum durum, or durum wheat – grano duro in Italian, duro meaning hard. And amber-coloured, high-protein durum is hard, the hardest of the wheats; it has a glass-like quality and shatters when milled, a completely different behaviour from common wheat, which is known as grano tenero (meaning soft).
Durum wheat flour is the flour used for (almost) all dried pasta, as well as for the vast family of fresh flour-and-water pasta shapes of southern Italy, including orecchiette and cavatelli. So, durum wheat flour is the name to remember and to look for on the packet when you want to make orecchiette. The other things to remember are: the rule of thumb is 2:1 flour to water, so to make pasta for four you need 400g durum wheat flour and 200g warm water; and that children are good at making pasta, because it is necessarily playful.
You can make the dough in a food processor, but working in a bowl or on a work surface gives you more control. First, make a mountain of durum wheat flour, then swirl a crater into the top into which you can add the water gradually, pinching it first into a rough ball, which you then knead into a smooth, silky (think talcumed bum cheek) ball. The aim is a firm but malleable dough, rather like plasticine softened just enough to mould into shapes.
Cut off a piece of dough the size of an egg and put the rest under an unturned bowl, so it doesn’t dry out. Roll the “egg” into a rope about 1½cm thick, then cut off 1cm nuggets. With the knife held horizontally to the table, line up the tip edge of the knife with the edge of each nugget, put a fingertip on top of the blade and drag the tip of the knife across the dough so it spreads out into a round and curls up towards you. Invert this over your thumb, so it looks a bit like an ear or a little cup. Alternatively, use dried orecchiette for this week’s sauce, a two-part, hot and cold summer sauce of cooked and raw tomatoes.
Orecchiette with raw and cooked tomato sauce
Prep 15 min
Cook 15 min
Serves 4
6 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled, 1 bashed, the other minced
500g peeled fresh tomatoes, good quality-tinned plus their juice, crushed
A handful of basil
400g sweet cherry tomatoes, quartered
Salt
Dried oregano
600g fresh orecchiette, or 500g dried
Salted ricotta, pecorino, parmesan or grana padano, to serve (optional)
In a deep frying pan, warm three tablespoons of the olive oil and the whole bashed garlic clove, until the garlic smells fragrant. Add the tomatoes, half the basil and a pinch of salt, and simmer for 15 minutes, pressing the tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon to break them up into a rich sauce.
Meanwhile, in a wide bowl, mix the quartered cherry tomatoes with the minced garlic, a pinch of dried oregano and the remaining olive oil and leave to sit.
Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water until al dente, then lift directly into the pan with the sauce. Toss well, then tip the sauced pasta on top of the raw tomatoes and toss everything well, with more torn fresh basil. Divide between bowls and pass around grated cheese.
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