Our pals at Rio Vista Olives sent us the incredible oil that we cook with in this post. Like everything that we recommend on our blog, we use and love their products, and hope that you will too!
The Story
Pici are the answer to all of your thick, chewy pasta cravings. They’re sort an Italian equivalent to chunky hand cut rice noodles. We usually make them with just bread flour and water, but this week we’ve taken it up a notch by swapping out the water for red wine. You’ll lose a little of the already pale colour as it cooks, but the pasta will retain a deep fruitiness. We served them up with a chunky sauce of crispy sausage meat, fried chunks of bread, and wilted greens, for a satisfying dish loaded with texture and flavour.
The Pasta
This is possibly my favourite category of pasta: the type that can be made messily, and without concern for symmetry or consistency. You simply roll out long pieces of dough and chop them up. It’s also a great one to make with many sets of hands!
To mix the dough, just mound your flour, and gradually pour in the wine as you stir it together with a fork (or your hand).
Once it holds together in a ball, get in there with your hands and give it the usual 10 minute knead before wrapping it up to rest for 30 minutes. You should have a beautiful smooth, soft ball of dough (and it will smell fantastic). As always when cooking with wine, use something that you’d enjoy drinking. There should be no such thing as ‘cooking wine’, just as there should be no such thing as ‘cooking oil’! It’s even more important when working with simple dishes that you choose the very best quality ingredients.
There are many ways to roll out your long thin pasta sausages. We usually start by chopping them up into small lumps and flattening them down a bit, and then roll them back and forth moving our hands outwards from the middle to lengthen each piece. It’s the same technique that you might remember from earlier dishes like our casarecce and gemelli.
Once the pasta is down to a thickness of around 1cm, cut them into lengths of 20-30cm, and refrigerate uncovered on lightly floured baking paper lined trays.
I’m obsessed with Worcestershire and cracked pepper sausages, but you can of course substitute these with Italian sausages for a more traditional flavour.
As with most of our other sausage recipes, there’s not much to it, just take your time developing its crispiness in the pan, and don’t add your greens in too early. To save time and simplify the whole recipe, we threw chunks of sourdough bread directly into the pan with the other ingredients, letting them do their thing as best they could in the oil available; but if you’re after extra crunchiness, fry them up in their own pan, and stir them through right before plating.
This was one of those meals that we ate with ‘yeah, okay, this isn’t too bad’ every few mouthfuls. It may not look much alongside a slow-cooked pork shoulder ragu, but sometimes all that you need is a chewy bit of pasta and a mouthful of sausage.
Roll up those sleeves and make some pasta! Buon appetito.
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Air tight container for resting
- Frypan
Ingredients
Pasta
- 150 g bread flour
- 2 tsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Vintage Range Augusto)
- 30 ml red wine
Sauce
- 3 tbsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Vintage Range Augusto)
- 200 g Worcestershire and cracked pepper sausage
- 1 large slice sourdough bread torn into chunks
- 200 g Tuscan kale
- 4 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 1 tsp dried red chilli flakes
Instructions
Pasta
- Gradually stir the wine and olive oil into the flour with a fork until it begins to come together. If it’s too dry, very gradually add water; if too wet, add a small amount of flour.
- Knead vigorously for 10 minutes, then rest in an airtight container for 30 minutes, away from sunlight and heat.
- Roll the dough into a rough log, and then chop into 12-16 pieces. Rolling back and forwards, and gradually moving your hands from the middle outwards, form the pasta into long thin sausages of around 1cm in diameter. Cut these into lengths of approximately 30cm.
- Transfer to lightly floured baking paper lined trays and refrigerate for up to one week uncovered.
Sauce
- Squeeze the sausage out into rough lumps of meat, and then fry on medium heat in the olive oil until brown and crispy on the outside, 5-10 minutes.
- Chop the Tuscan kale into large pieces, raise the heat to medium-high, and then add to the pan with the garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, or until the kale has wilted and the garlic is beginning to brown.
- Clear a space in the frypan, and then add the chunks of bread and chilli. Fry for 1 minute, until the breadcrumbs have browned and the chilli has become nutty and aromatic.
- Drop the pasta into lightly salted boiling water, and then cook for 12-14 minutes, or until al dente (no white is visible in the dough when the pasta is cut into). Drain, retaining 1/2 a cup of the cooking water.
- Add the pasta into the frypan, and toss through the sauce. Gradually add the pasta water if required to assist in emulsification. Serve with a crack of fresh pepper.
It looks delicious I loved it Thanks for sharing I will try it at home
Hi! Thank you so much! You’re very welcome. It’s simple and uncomplicated, but sometimes that’s the best type of dish. I hope that you enjoy it 😊