Mezzipaccheri pasta with meat sauce of Nerino umbro pig and salted ricotta from Norcia Published from Redazione Best Of The Apps
The recipe for baked pasta from Marche region, accompanied by typical Umbrian products… perfect for holidays!
Winter is coming also to the Apennines: it’s time to dedicate ourselves to those recipes that remind us of the festive season and our origins. Our watchword is therefore: typical products! These are the goodness of tradition and were expertly dosed and mixed by our grandmothers to prepare Sunday lunch or even Christmas dinner.
In the recipe that we propose, we try to do just that: join the typical products together to make a dish that takes us back to the good old times. First, however, we would like to talk about the raw materials used, the real local excellence.
The queen in this dish is pasta: mezzi paccheri di Carla Latini made by bronze-wire drawing and slow drying. The grains are hard and grow in the Marche region. The result is a tenacious pasta that does not overcook.
The meat used comes from the nerino cinghiato pig. This particular kind of black pig has been re-discovered only recently, raised in Valnerina – generally in the wild.
The ricotta cheese is typical for Norcia. The peasants kept it in an elongated shape, sprinkled with wheat bran, to be able to taste it in all seasons.
Ingredients for 4 servings
400 g mezzi paccheri di Carla Latini
3 Nerino umbro pork sausages
200 g of guanciale nerino umbro (pork jowl)
1 celery
2 carrots
½ onion
10 tomatoes
200 g salted ricotta cheese from Norcia
pepper, salt, red wine and olive oil to taste
Directions
– First, boil water
– Take the celery, the carrots and the onion. After having removed the leaves from the celery and peeled the carrots and the onion, cut the vegetables into small cubes (as the French would say, a “brunoise” cut).
– While the vegetables are put to fry, cut the nerino umbro jowl into cubes and break the sausages up by hand.
– Check the water: if it is boiling, it is time to add salt and mezzi paccheri pasta to it. Cooking time: 10 minutes!
– Add the meat to the sautéed vegetables and cook over moderate heat. Add salt, pepper and red wine.
– Meanwhile, take the tomatoes (if possible, remove their skins) and mix them, then immediately put the mixture together with other vegetables and meat.
– preheat the static oven to 220 ° C.
– Take a baking pan or four heatproof single-serving containers suitable for an oven (perhaps made of porcelain), and sprinkle with grated salted ricotta cheese from Norcia.
– It is time to drain the pasta, which will be cooked al dente, and quickly put it in the vegetable and meat sauce.
– Put the pasta in the baking pan or in single-portion containers. Sprinkle with a little ricotta cheese and bake in the oven for 3 minutes.
– The dish is ready! Place mezzi paccheri still hot on a plate. If you want, you can add some more salted ricotta cheese for a more intense flavour.
If you aren’t lovers of smooth pasta you can replace mezzi paccheri with mezze maniche di Carla Latini: they hold the sauce and require a shorter cooking time.
If you cannot get jowl and nerino umbro pork sausage, you can replace them with those of the pork from the typical pink pig. However, if you are looking for the authentic taste of the Apennines we suggest you try this dish with the meat of the typical Valnerina pig. Next time you are passing through Norcia (maybe for Christmas?) You can stock up on these excellent raw materials from the producers of Best of the Apps!
For nerino umbro pork meat we suggest you go to:
For the salted ricotta cheese from Norcia , it is worth going to Castelluccio di Norcia: