Fregnacce: This extraordinarily simple pasta dish from the Marche has a punch. Quite a bit of a punch, and some serve it with a little bit of broth for those unused to sharp flavors or spicy foods. It's now considered poor mountain cuisine, but I wonder how poor it was in the past when pepper was expensive. What it was, and is, is stimulating, a zesty dish that will perk up the digestion, and if eaten under the proper circumstances, much more.
To serve 4:
To serve 4:
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cook Time: 5 minutes
Ingredients:
- ** For the Pasta **
- 4 1/5 cups (500 g) flour
- 5 eggs
- ** For the Sauce **
- Freshly ground black pepper
- Well aged pecorino, freshly grated (you can use pecorino Romano here, though the ideal would be something more crumbly)
- 1 cup simmering broth
Preparation:
Knead the eggs into the flour one by one, and continue kneading until you have obtained a firm elastic dough (see instructions if need be). Let the dough rest for a half hour, covered with a damp cloth lest it form a skin.Once it has rested, roll it out not too thin with a rolling pin (about a 16th of an inch, or 2 mm) and cut it into 8-inch (20 cm) squares. Cook them in salted water, drain them (use a broad flat strainer to fish them out of the pot; they should be done in about 3-5 minutes), sprinkle them liberally with grated cheese and pepper, and roll them up. Serve them warm; the authors suggest that you ladle some hot broth over them on the serving platter to reduce their punch. If you choose not to, I would sprinkle them with melted butter.
The wine? The pepper would clash with the tannins of a red. So white, say a Verdicchio.
