Curzul pasta with shallots
Pina started making pasta when she was 9 years old, but you can start practising now with this recipe.
For the dough, you’ll need 1 egg for every 100g of soft wheat (all purpose) flour. For 4 people with hearty appetites you can reckon on a 4 egg pasta.
Watch Pina’s episode here, and follow her by making a ‘well’ of flour, adding the eggs and gradually mixing everything in with your fingers, followed by a jolly good knead of the dough.
Once the dough feels silky and smooth to touch, pop it in a plastic bag to rest for 30 minutes. Or cover it with an upturned bowl, which saves on the plastic.
Next roll it out, aiming for a thickness which you find with shop bought pre-rolled pastry. i.e. you don’t have to achieve a semi translucent sheet of dough.
Flour it well, and roll it up. Then using a very sharp knife, slice it in 3 millimetre wide strips. Shake them out, and spread them out to dry a little.
Bring water to the boil, add a generous pinch of salt, bring it back to the boil and add the pasta. Boil for a couple of minutes. Taste a strand to test for doneness. Drain and add to the sauce.
For the shallot sugo:
It’s a small amount of meat as it’s a shallot sauce, not a sausage meat one.
3 tablespoons of olive oil
5 good sized sized shallots, diced
2 good quality Italian sausages
pinch of peperoncino
a large wine glass of white wine
400ml of tomato passata
Heat the olive oil over a medium heat in a frying pan and fry the chopped shallots for several minutes until they are softened. Strip the sausages of their skins and crumble them into the pan and continue frying the meat and shallots until the sausage has turned colour. Stir in the peperoncino, white wine and passata. Reduce the heat, and let everything simmer for 20 minutes or until the sauce is thick. Check for seasoning half way through: Italian sausages are often quite salty, so you may not need to add extra.
Mix with the pasta and eat immediately.
In Faenza, they don’t serve with dish with Parmigiano cheese, as they like to taste the shallots. The pasta police won’t shoot you if you do.