Orecchiette con Cime di Rapa e Acciughe Pugliesi

Bari

‹ Puglia

Cook this

The working recipe — the Market List, the Method, and where it lives or dies

→

Origin

Puglia — Bari province, the iconic Pugliese daily pasta

Description

The definitive orecchiette preparation: handmade orecchiette with bitter turnip tops (cime di rapa/broccoli rabe) and anchovy. The orecchiette and cime di rapa are cooked in the same water — the pasta is added to the cime di rapa's boiling water, and both are drained together. The dish is dressed with a sauce of anchovies dissolved in olive oil with garlic and optional chilli. The bitter green, the salty-umami anchovy, and the olive oil richness are the three legs of this preparation. Orecchiette made from semolina and water, shaped by dragging a blunt knife across a dough rope.

III

The Thread

—Both are pasta-and-bitter-green-and-anchovy combinations — the Roman version uses broccolo romanesco and rigatoni; the Pugliese uses cime di rapa and orecchiette; same three-ingredient logic Roman

—Pasta with bitter greens and anchovy cream — the Sicilian version often adds toasted breadcrumbs (pangrattato) as a textural element that Puglia rarely includes Sicilian

—Pasta with broccoli, garlic, and anchovies — the Spanish parallel to the Southern Italian pasta-bitter-green-anchovy tradition across the Mediterranean Spanish

Flavour Context

Bitter, earthy cime di rapa against the umami-salty depth of dissolved anchovy; olive oil richness; the orecchiette cup each floret and pool the oil — one of Italy's essential pasta dishes in its regional canonical form

Pillars V — VII

The full training pages are part of membership.

Quality hierarchy, sensory tests, and where the dish lives or dies — on every entry in the Library.

Enter · from $49 a year

← PreviousOrecchiette con Cime di Rapa — Ear-Shaped Pasta with Turnip Tops Next →Orecchiette Cime di Rapa con Alici di Scoglio

‹ Puglia · Contents · The Library