Disclaimer: Please note that as an Amazon Associate, Pasta et Al earns a small commission from qualifying purchases. It won’t cost you anything extra, but will help to keep us operating. We use and love all of the bits and pieces that we recommend on our blog, and hope that you will too!
The Story
There was often a uniquely delicious smell filling my great aunty’s house when we’d drop by for a meal. This is in contrast to my poor nonna, whose penchant for boiled broad beans left her house more often than not smelling like sweaty feet. It was many years before I learned that the characteristic ingredients of my aunty’s famous pasta bake (and to be fair, my nonna’s equally famous prupettone) were in fact rather representative of southern Italian cooking in general: the humble hardboiled egg and a chunk of salami. So this week we are making the ultimate pasta al forno, packed with the flavours that defined my childhood and that tie us back to our family’s dear Calabria.
For our pasta, we’re hand-rolling tortiglioni, which you can think of as sort of large rigatoni. Their grooves will collect and cling to all kinds of delicious things, but in this case it’s our all-star cast of tiny pork and veal meatballs, nduja, cacciatore Calabrese, hard-boiled eggs, provolone, romano, chilli, tomatoes, and a big old handful of spice. I’m drooling a little bit reading back over my own list of ingredients. Let’s get into it.
The Pasta
This pasta dough is another of our egg and yolk recipes, and in fact you might remember a very similar ratio in our paccheri. These tortiglioni are kind of smaller, ridged versions of them.
Once you’ve combined your well of ingredients into a ball, given it 10 minutes of kneading and 30 minutes of resting, remember to roll it through the pasta machine a few times (folding over itself in between passes) before getting down to business.
Step it incrementally through to a thickness of 6, and then cut each sheet into rectangles of about 60mm width, and 70mm length. Note that these measurements were customised for a piece of dowel that we found in the garage, with a 14mm diameter. If you’re using a different sized object to wrap the pasta around, find yourself a piece of paper or spare bit of dough to determine how wide your rectangles should be before you start cutting.
Working with one piece at a time, wrap your rectangles around the dowel, running a wet finger along the underside of the top overlapping edge if it’s not sticking by itself.
Then just roll that little thing across your gnocchi board, with the grooves running parallel to the long edge of the pasta. Start on the dough overlap and roll towards the exposed edge to ensure that the seal remains.
Transfer to baking paper lined trays, standing up if possible to maintain the shape. Tip: we stand ours up in tall cake tins, nice and close to each other, to make transport easier! Transfer uncovered to the fridge for up to a week. The longer you leave them, the better the bite they’ll develop.
The Sauce
It doesn’t get much more Calabrese than nduja. Maybe I’m biased through some sort of genetic predisposition, but this may be the single greatest food stuff ever created. It has spice, heat, smokiness, texture, and pork. All of these familiar qualities of southern Italian food, rolled into one incredible, spreadable paste. If you want Calabria in a mouthful, get some nduja in ya.
Now, for full disclosure, it was harder to get a hold of these true regional foods when I was a kid, so I developed an equally fierce passion for your more standard cured meats and sliceable salamis. Chopped and mixed through a pasta bake, or rolled inside a giant meatball, these firm and chewy little punches of flavour are tiny bits of nostalgia. So for our pasta bake, torn by indecision (not really), we used both! This time around we opted for cacciatore Calabrese, but you can swap this for any hard, spicy salami.
For all the talk of egg and salami, one of the most memorable parts of my great aunty’s pasta bake was the tiny meatballs peppered throughout. These might seem like a nuisance to make, but I timed it for you, and you can crank one out every 5 seconds, including mixing time. So less than 10 minutes for 100 meatballs, which is about what this recipe makes, and I’ve even granted you a minute there to bask in your efficient meatballing glory. We talked about meatballs back in our meatballs and tomato sauce recipe, but the gist is: get your hands in there and squeeze it all messily between your fingers, before compressing and rolling it into balls.
So how do you make it? Well, shallow fry those meatballs, remove them to make your soffritto in the same oil, then put them back in with the tomatoes for 20 minutes. Simple! Stir in the cacciatore, hard boil the eggs, blanch the pasta, and you’re ready to begin construction.
Similar to building a lasagne, start with a wet layer of sauce and pasta, before layering with chunks of nduja, provolone, romano, and egg; repeat that until it’s all used up. This recipe will fill a 20x30cm dish, with 4-5 layers. Bake for half an hour, until the exposed pasta begins to darken or you are overcome by excessive mouth watering.
Thank you for joining us, and buon appetito!
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Air tight container for resting
- Wooden dowel, 14mm diameter
- Ridged gnocchi board
- Enamelled cast iron pot (or large regular pot)
- 20x30cm lasagne dish
- Pasta roller and cutter (if not using a rolling pin and knife)
Ingredients
Pasta
- 225 g 00 flour
- 75 g durum semolina flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 eggs
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
Meatballs
- 250 g veal mince
- 250 g pork mince
- 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup parmesan
- 1 egg
- 1/2 tsp ground sage
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
- 1/2 tsp hot paprika
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Sauce
- 6-8 cloves garlic
- 1 onion
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- handful basil
- small handful sage
- 1/2 tbsp fennel seeds
- 800 ml passata
- 1 tsp sugar
- salt and pepper to season
- 4 eggs
- 100 g nduja
- 100 g cacciatore Calabrese
- 200 g provolone cheese
- 35 g romano cheese
Instructions
Pasta
- Combine the 00 and durum semolina flours, and the salt, and form into a well. Add the eggs, egg yolks, and oil into the centre, and stir with a fork to combine.
- Form into a ball using your hands, and knead vigorously for 10 minutes. If the dough sticks to your hands or the kneading surface, add 1-2 teaspoons of flour at a time; if it is too dry, add water in similar amounts.
- Transfer to an airtight container, and leave to rest for 30 minutes, away from heat or direct sunlight.
- Divide the dough into 4 portions, storing those that you’re not working on back in the airtight container. Pass through a pasta machine on the thickest setting a few times, folding the dough over itself in between passes, before incrementally stepping it through to a thickness of 6.
- Cut each sheet into rectangles of about 60mm width, and 70mm length. Note that this is for a dowel of 14mm diameter; if using a different sized object to wrap the pasta around, use a piece of paper or spare bit of dough to determine how wide your rectangles should be.
- Working with one rectangle at a time, wrap around the dowel. If the overlapped edges don’t seal against each other, run a wet finger along the underside of the top overlapping edge.
- With grooves running parallel to the length of the pasta, roll across a gnocchi board. Starting on the overlap and rolling towards the exposed edge will ensure that the seal remains.
- Transfer to baking paper lined trays, standing on their ends to maintain the shape. You can also stand them up in kitchen containers or cake tins to make transport easier. Refrigerate uncovered for up to one week.
Meatballs, Sauce, Bake
- Combine all meatball ingredients apart from the olive oil in a bowl, using your hands to knead together like dough. Let it squeeze through your fingers.
- To save time, quickly divide the meatball mix into roughly small grape-sized lumps, before rolling them all into tiny meatballs between your palms.
- Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a large heavy pot, and then fry the meatballs until a golden brown crust begins to form. If you don’t have a large pot, cook these in batches to avoid overcrowding.
- Remove meatballs from the pot and set aside. Drop heat down to low-medium and add 2 tbsps of oil to the pot.
- Dice the onion and roughly chop the garlic, before dropping into the pot that you just cooked the meatballs in. Cook, stirring, for 10 minutes or until onion has softened.
- Add the basil, sage, and fennel seeds, and cook for a further 2-3 minutes or until basil has turned a bright green and herbs are aromatic.
- Pour in the passata, seasoning with the sugar, salt, and pepper. Be sure to half fill the empty passata bottle with water, and swill around before also pouring that into the pot. Reintroduce the meatballs, drop heat to low and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Add the eggs into a pot with enough cold water to cover, and bring to the boil. Boil for 14 minutes, until hard, before removing and immersing in cold water. Remove shells.
- After 20 minutes, remove the sauce from the pot and stir through the cacciatore, chopped into half discs.
- Blanch the pasta in boiling water for 25-30 seconds, and then drain before plunging into iced water.
- Break the nduja into small chunks, and chop the provolone and hard-boiled eggs into cubes.
- Spoon a layer of sauce and pasta into the lasagna dish, before sprinkling with nduja, provolone, and egg. Repeat until all ingredients are used up; 4-5 layers.
- Transfer dish to oven, and cook for 30 minutes or until top layer of pasta begins to darken.
- Remove and allow to sit for a few minutes before serving.
