World Pasta Day: 7 lesser known shapes and how to eat them
Whether you’re a pasta aficionado and make your own dough by hand, from scratch, and have one of those fancy chrome pasta machines welded to your kitchen worktop, or reliably dunk dried spaghetti in boiling water three times a week, we all know it: A life without pasta would be a very sad one indeed.
But it’s World Pasta Day, and so instead of your go-to strands of tagliatelle and comforting bites of cheese-laden macaroni, today is the day to experiment with your pasta shapes.
Make bowl space for this lot…
1. Strozzapreti
Handmade and twisted, strozzapreti is also rather macabrely known as ‘priest-strangler’ pasta in Italian. Avoid the murderous undertones though, and toss it through a seafood and white wine sauce.
2. Gnocchetti
Made with semolina, gnocchetti are diminutive pasta shapes, curled like a fist and deeply grooved to neatly tuck away sauce (fennel, tomato and sausage suits us just fine).
3. Caramelle
Sweet in shape if not in filling, caramelle is stuffed pasta, with its ends twisted as though it had come straight out of a Quality Street tin. These ones are expertly loaded with rabbit, but ricotta would do just as nicely.
4. Orecchietti
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Orecchiette, or ‘little ears’, are nubbly and quite dense, and work really well with earthy greens (think broccoli, spinach and chard) and fried breadcrumbs.
5. Fregola
This Sardinian pasta looks almost like couscous (and is made in roughly the same way), and is largely treated as you would a grain. Use it as the base for a light pasta salad, or to add bulk to an autumn soup.
6. Trofie
Short, slightly twisted and with quite a kink in them, this sturdy pasta makes a good alternative to penne, or fusilli when it comes to throwing together a quick pesto pasta mid-week dinner.
7. Mezzaluna
Essentially ravioli, mezzaluna also owe something to pasties – what with the half moon shapes concealing a hearty stuffing. Fill them with herbs and squash, or a multitude of cheeses and serve with a simple butter sauce.
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