Cook this
The working recipe — the Market List, the Method, and where it lives or dies
I
Origin
Tuscany — Lucca
II
Description
Lucca's pasta — a large, oval filled pasta unique to the Lucca area, with a filling that contains both meat (pork, veal, or rabbit) and a green herb-cheese component (ricotta, spinach, Parmigiano, lemon zest). Unlike other Tuscan filled pasta, tordelli includes both meat and green in a single filling — a preparation that reflects Lucca's medieval position as a wealthy trading city that could afford more complex preparations. Dressed with a meat ragù — the filling and the sauce both contain meat, creating an echo effect.
III
The Thread
—Large filled pasta with a ricotta-spinach filling in a meat sauce — Lucca adds the braised meat to the filling itself, creating the double-meat echo that Bologna achieves by serving ricotta filling with meat sauce Bolognese
—Filled pasta with vegetable-cheese filling served with a meat-based sauce — the contrast of filling and sauce representing two different cooking traditions in one dish Roman
—Filled pasta with a meat-and-cheese filling — both the Mantovano and Lucchese traditions use a composite filling containing meat and dairy as the most luxurious expression of their regional pasta canon Mantovan
IV
Flavour Context
Meat-and-herb filling with lemon thread, egg pasta, pork-veal ragù — complex, layered, the medieval luxury of Lucca's trading city history
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