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
The Italian-Australian experience, and all that it brings with it, is actually the only ‘Italian’ that I’ve ever known. My brother and I grew up with an Italian mum (first-generation Australian) and an English-Australian dad, spending most of our early years in the care of a thoroughly Calabrian Nonna who arrived in that rich 50s boom. To this day, the only Italian that sounds right to me is her comfortable, lazy southern drawl, and the only Italian-English accent that makes sense comes from that same familiar dialect. Likewise, the food, customs, and characters that I grew up knowing first as just family, and then later as ‘Italian’ are actually part of this unique transplanted blend of cultures. And I know that we’re not alone!
So for this week’s pasta we wanted to create a dish that really allowed Italian to meet Australian. Those true native flavours and even shapes that are so well known to our First Peoples, but that we don’t see too much of in recipes. I think that many Australians feel an affinity with our natural world, but the original custodians of this land have a relationship that spans tens of thousands of years, from long before outsiders first took it from them and disingenuously invited my ancestors in two centuries later. I want little Al to grow up with his own love and appreciation for what we have today, but with this understanding of what brought us here. And of course, we’re a family that passes on ideas and history through food, so we’re starting here with pasta!
Little Al and I carved our own cavarola boards for this dish, featuring some of the amazing shapes that we find in native Australian fauna, and that I remember vividly from my very earliest years. Wattle, that used to grow outside the front door where I grew up in the hills of Perth; parrotbush, that my brother and I used to play in, carefully manoeuvring around the prickles; grevillea, that’d I’d pick for the people I cared about; and seagrass, that I remember diving down amongst on holidays and weekends all along the coast.
We have two incredible dough ingredients to complement our embossed pasta, familiar and exciting at the same time: wattleseed, and peppermint gum. Wattleseed is earthy, a bit like coffee and chocolate, with peppermint gum a light breath of eucalyptus. In dried form, they keep well, and are perfect for mixing into dough.
We’ve also been growing a few edible natives in the garden, so we thought that we’d go for a true Italian-Australian accompanying sauce, in a little nod to those years spent running down the back to collect basil for Nonna’s mortar and pestle. A Genovese-style pesto, but flavoured with punchy native Australian sea celery, lightly salty seablite, hot mountain pepper leaves, and a fresh hint of native mint. Incredible flavours (but go easy on that mountain pepper)!
Now for all of the things that we have growing in our small garden (from herbs and mustard greens used in our pansotti, to edible flowers that you might have seen in our hankies) we always seem to be out of the things that we need most. Like basil. On pesto day. Luckily we’re up for any excuse to go to the markets, and our trusty Ziggy’s Fresh had our backs. As well as being able to rely on them for the various fruit and veg staples that we’ve invariably forgotten about until we get there, there’s nothing better than being able to buy potted herbs at the local green grocer.
Aside from the fact that they’re basically the same price, they keep better, go further, and make a good outdoor project for little people. Little Al is in charge of our garden, so he chose us some plants, ran around underfoot yelling for a few minutes, and then we collected our other pesto ingredients and headed home.
So here it is, our wattleseed and peppermint gum malloreddus with sea celery and macadamia pesto.
The Pasta
First up, proud of them though we are, the boards that we designed and made down in the garage are not essential to the success of this dish. You can use a good old gnocchi board or even the back of a grater or fork as a decent alternative.
The doughs themselves are beautifully simple. Just durum semolina flour with water, a little olive oil, and a pinch of salt. And of course those dried herbs! Remember 10 minutes kneading, before 30 minutes resting, sealed up and away from heat and sunlight.
Then to make the malloreddus, simply roll the dough into long, very thin sausages, cut it into small pea-sized pieces, and use your thumb or a scraper to roll it across your texturing surface. If you have the time, you can roll each piece into a ball to give the finished pasta more tapered edges. Note that we played around a bit with sizes, so while many of these photos show larger pieces of pasta (with more discernible detail), we highly recommend the littler ones that you can see in the plated dish.
Forming miniature malloreddus by (little) hand.
You’ll quickly get the hang of that down and away from you pressure, and any pieces that you mess up can easily be squished back up and rerolled!
If you’re storing these in the fridge (up to one week), remember to keep them uncovered for a little extra chewiness.
Now making pesto is as simple as smacking everything around in a mortar and pestle until you’re happy with the consistency. Remember that it’s all about fresh ingredients and high quality olive oil!
Drop the malloreddus into boiling water and cook until no white dough is visible when you cut across them, but no longer! If you’ve made them small, then they should only need 4-5 minutes, but if you’ve gone for grape-sized pieces it could take up to 20. Then toss through the pesto, and serve with a crack of mountain pepper berries and freshly fried native mint.
This is a delightfully simple recipe, extraordinarily tasty, and one that’s perfect for tiny and numerous hands to get involved with. So have fun, and eat well. Buon appetito!
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Air tight container for resting
- Cavarola board, or gnocchi board
Ingredients
Pasta
- 220 g durum semolina flour
- 120 ml warm water
- 1 tsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Nothin’ But Classic)
- 1 tsp wattleseed ground
- 1/2 tsp peppermint gum dried and ground
- 1/2 tsp salt
Pesto
- 60 g roasted macadamias
- 40 g basil
- 2 tbsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Nothin’ But Classic)
- 30 g pecorino cheese
- 1 large clove garlic
- 3 large sprigs sea celery
- 2 large sprigs seablite
- 4-5 leaves native mint leaves
- 1 leaf mountain pepper
To Serve
- 3-4 mountain pepper berries cracked
- 6-8 native mint leaves
Instructions
- Mix together the flour and salt, and then form into two equal flour wells. Add the wattle seed into one well, along with the water and oil. Bring it together into a ball, and then knead for 10 minutes before covering with cling wrap. Repeat with the river mint gum and the remaining dough ingredients, and then similarly seal in cling wrap. Leave both to rest for 30 minutes, away from heat and sunlight.
- Cut each ball of dough in half, and roll them out into long, very thin sausages, no thicker than a pencil. Cover any dough that you’re not working on to prevent it drying out. Chop the sausages into small pea-sized pieces, shape into balls, and then use a cavarola (or gnocchi board), the back of a grater, or the underside of a fork to roll into malloreddus. The technique is to roll each piece away from yourself, providing just enough downwards pressure to imprint the dough as it folds over itself. Transfer to lightly-floured baking-paper lined trays, and refrigerate for up to one week, uncovered.
- To make the pesto, add all ingredients into the mortar and pestle and pound until mostly smooth with some chunks, or to your desired consistency. For a greener colour, finely chop the leafy ingredients beforehand.
- Drop the malloreddus into boiling water, and cook for 4-5 minutes or until al dente. Note that the larger you make your pasta, the longer they will take to cook (up to 20 minutes for grape-sized balls). You know they’re ready if still firm but showing no white dough when cut into. Drain, retaining a little of the pasta water, and toss into the pesto. If needed, add a little of the water back in to help the pesto and pasta emulsify. Serve with cracked mountain pepper berries.
Hi, i’m just wondering, can you make this with something else topping. 🤔