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Italian · V The Canonical Dishes · Puglia

Orecchiette con Cime di Rapa — Ear-Shaped Pasta with Turnip Tops

Puglia

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I

Origin

Puglia — orecchiette con cime di rapa is so strongly associated with Bari that the handmade orecchiette of the Via delle Orecchiette (a street in Bari Vecchia where women still make orecchiette outside their houses and sell them daily) is one of the most famous Italian food photographs. The preparation is pan-Pugliese but the handmade tradition is specifically Barese.

II

Description

Orecchiette con cime di rapa is the definitive Pugliese primo and one of the great combinations in Italian cooking — the small, ear-shaped pasta (orecchiette, named for their resemblance to small ears) made from semolina and water is cooked together with the blanched, bitter turnip tops (cime di rapa — rapini, broccoli rabe), the cime di rapa dissolved into the cooking water creating an intensely flavoured, slightly bitter-green pasta water that becomes the sauce. Anchovy, garlic, and peperoncino are the flavouring; no tomato. The bitterness of the cime di rapa is not something to be moderated — it is the point.

III

The Thread

—Bitter greens cooked with their cooking water used as the flavour base — the Portuguese caldo verde (using the couve galega's bitter, dark green cooking water as the soup's body) and the Pugliese orecchiette con cime di rapa both use the bitter green's cooking water as the primary flavouring medium Portuguese
—Pasta or noodles cooked in the water of braised bitter greens — the Catalan tradition of cooking fideos in bitter green broths parallels the Pugliese technique of cooking orecchiette in the cime di rapa water; both are expressions of the 'cook pasta in the flavoured vegetable water' technique Spanish · Catalan
IV

Flavour Context

Orecchiette con cime di rapa in the bowl is dark green and fragrant — the bitter-green flavour of the cime di rapa permeates everything. The pasta has absorbed the cooking water's bitterness and dark colour; the anchovy has dissolved into the oil and provides invisible depth; the garlic and peperoncino add warmth. The final raw olive oil is the DOP Pugliese finish that brightens everything. It is one of the most vivid preparations in Italian cooking.

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