Today we were lucky enough to have our staff taught how to make orecchiette by hand. Our teacher was Roberto Saracino’s mother. Roberto supplies top quality Italian products like cheese, salumi and truffles to us. His mother lives in Turin now but is from Puglia, where orecchiette originated.
She made the dough old school style with the liquids in a well made of flour. She gradually folded in the liquids, stirring constantly. She then rolled the pasta into long tubes and cut little balls by hand which she shaped into orecchiette by scraping the balls against the wood with a knife.
She and I made the pasta by boiling it in the water used to make broccoli rape. I added some of her homemade anchovies and some peperoncino. It was a pretty amazing lunch and I’m so glad our team got to learn from an expert from Italy.
I want her to come back to teach us some more pastas but I’ll probably have to buy a lot of stuff from her son first. I just ordered a bunch of white Alba truffles so maybe that will get me another day of training!
