Tonight’s Monday Pasta comes half-way from La Cucina Italiana magazine.  The pasta is from the magazine, but the sauce is pure Victor.

He was looking in the magazine for recipes when I asked in my most-pleading voice if he would make his red sauce tonight.  The pasta was almost secondary.  I was craving the red sauce.

And to make it even better, we had pork ribs in the freezer that would become fall-off-the-bone-tender after simmering in the sauce all day.  And they did.

There’s no recipe** for the sauce.  It just is.  There are as many variations of this simple sauce as there are Italian households out there.  Everyone’s is the best – except Victor’s really is!

**EDITED TO ADD** Victor’s Spaghetti Sauce.  He finally wrote it down.

The semolina pasta has substance to it.  It works well shaped into the malloreddus, but would work equally well as a linguine or papardelle.

This was perfect.  Exactly what I was hoping for.

My stomach is smiling.

Malloreddus

  • Sea Salt
  • 1 ¼ cups semolina flour
  • ¾ cup unbleached all purpose flour
  • Extra virgin olive oil

Gnocchi board or a table fork

Dissolve 1 tsp salt in ¾ cup warm water. In a large bowl whisk together semolina and all purpose flour; mound and form a well in the center.

Add water mixture and 2 tsp olive oil to the well. Using your hand or a fork, slowly incorporate flour from inside the rim of the well. Continue until liquid is absorbed, then knead in bowl until dough forms a complete mass (dough will be slightly sticky).

Transfer dough to a well floured work surface and knead, dusting with a bit more flour as needed just to keep dough from sticking to your hands, for 5 minutes. Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.

Break off about 1/8 of the dough; tightly rewrap remaining dough. Roll dough into ½ inch cylinder, and cut into ¼ inch thick pieces. Pressing with your thumb, roll each piece on a gnocchi board (or down the back of a fork) to give it the characteristic ridges, and put on a floured baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough.

To cook fresh Malloreddus, bring a large pot of salted water to a bill. Add pasta and cook until tender, about 6 minutes after water returns to a boil. Drain, transfer to a large serving bowl and immediately toss with sauce and serve.