We’re regularly asked about gluten-free pasta, and to be honest the only reason that we haven’t blogged about it yet is that it feels a little too simple to put on a recipe card. Which of course is no reason at all. So this week, please accept our apologies for not posting it sooner, and enjoy our recipe for gluten-free reginette.

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. 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.

Pasta handkerchiefs! Growing up, the only hankies we had in the kitchen were either worn on our heads with the corners knotted, or magicked out of nowhere by Nonna, to be spat on and ferociously applied to whatever mess I’d covered myself with. And flowers with pasta? “Why you do that for?”. But here we are, laminating flowers into pasta, and cutting them into handkerchiefs.

Last week we tried to escape the mists and frosts of winter with a little touch of the seaside, but this week we’re embracing it. Or at least trudging on, bolstered by a hearty bowl of chewy wholemeal spelt gemelli. Their twisty texture and earthy flavour makes for a fortifying plate of pasta, whether it’s stirred through a hearty ragu, or tossed with a bit of butter and pepper.

Two of the clearest and most joyful memories that I have of my first visit to Italy, when I was four, are of me loudly pretending that I was being kidnapped as my dad tried to load me into the car across from the Colosseum, and sitting in the back seat of a cousin’s car as we hurtled through acres of olive trees in my nonna’s hometown of Melicuccà.

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.

This week we left the eggs in the fridge and the pasta machine in the cupboard, and made some good old flour and water casarecce. None of that fiddling around with egg to egg-yolk ratios and oil to water moisture levels; just two ingredients and our hands.

There was a time, many years ago as a young kid, when I knew the people that sold us our food. I could walk to the orchard at the end of the street for a box of fruit and veg, head off in my stroller with my nonna to collect eggs from around the corner, trade a bucket of loquats from the man two houses down.

This week’s pasta, with its paired sauce, is one big celebration of honouring your ingredients, and enjoying the histories of the dishes that you cook. With a hint of the unconventional and a touch of cultural fusion! A few weeks ago we made some tasty four cheese fagottini in beef bone broth. Whilst those little chaps owe their shape to Turkish manti, this week’s meaty sacchettoni filling takes its inspiration from them.

Farfalle are a much maligned pasta. I suppose that they’re easy to dismiss as a bit of a novelty, little butterflies that are stocked in most supermarkets, beloved to children, comfort food to adults. Often featuring in horrid cold salads. But when I look at farfalle I see textures: smooth expanses with ruffled edges, ridged hollows that hold sauce, an extra firm pinch in the middle to contrast with the softer bite of the flat sides.