Recipes from the Road: Orecchiette

Whether you’re slurping soup from the best cart in Chiang Mai or staring down a heaping helping of homemade pasta from nonna (someone’s nonna, anyway), partaking of the freshest, most delicious local fare is essential to becoming one with where you are.

While there’s no substitute for experiencing a cuisine in deep and up close, recreating a region’s signature dishes can bring a taste of its culinary tradition into your home—and whet your appetite in advance of your next trip. In Recipes from the Road, we help you do just that.

The absolute favourite pasta dish of the Pugliese, the homemade noodle orecchiette—named for its shape, which translates into “small ear”—comes from the cucina povera tradition, which emphasizes local ingredients harvested for nourishment and flavoured with regional herbs and spices. Bring Puglia to your plate with the orecchiette recipe below. (Still hungry? Check out our Puglia Immersion Kit for another way to prepare orecchiette.)

Orecchiette al pomodora e ricotta

Serves 4

Ingredients:

350 g of orecchiette (“baby ear” shaped pasta)
hard ricotta (grated)
fresh tomatoes (diced)
fresh basil (chopped)
fresh garlic (cloved)
extra-virgin olive oil
salt, to taste

Instructions:

Heat the oil in a large pan. Add cloved garlic to the oil and sauté. Add tomatoes, basil and most of the ricotta to pan, and continue to sauté. Boil the salted water, and add orecchiette. Remove pasta when it is al dente and drain. Add everything to pan and sauté. Serve after adding grated ricotta over the finished plate.