I stumbled across this in Siena last summer and have cooked it 3 / 4 times since. It’s now one of my favourite combinations of ingredients for oil -based pasta toppings…. Now, If you’re a regular follower you’ll know I dislike heavy pasta mantecatura (wallpaper paste-style) but I have to confess that these pici from Pasta Morelli lend themselves to more of a ‘velvety glaze’ than I would normally go for , but it works quite well as a winter dish….
Why do I go on about this? For me starch equals stodge and baby food; if you gravitate towards a lighter eating pasta dish be very careful with cooking dry pici like these and use a ridiculous amount of water - because the cooking times are longer than thinner pasta dry pici dump loads of starch into the cooking water. Go easy on any cooking water you add at the combining stage too and keep combining times to a minimum to avoid the stodge ….which I appreciate is nursery heaven to some…. Fresh pici are the obvious other alternative to get a lighter result and actually exactly what I was served in Italy….
Pici from @pastamorelli via @honoroakprovender , sausages and zucchini from @waitrose
Garlic from @garlic_farm, Isle of Wight
If you’d like to be a recipe tester for any of my dishes on Instagram for my book Pasta and Magic, DM me for that recipe spread from my book.
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