In short. Orecchiette con le cime di rapa is the dish Puglia is known for. Pasta and greens cook in the same water, and the sauce is nothing more than oil, garlic, chilli and anchovies melted together. Twenty minutes, start to finish.
If you eat one thing in Puglia, it is this. And the trick that makes it work is not an ingredient — it is cooking the turnip tops in the pasta water, so the pasta takes on their flavour instead of sitting next to it.
Ingredients
- 125 g of semolina and 250 g of plain white flour, if you are making the pasta — or 400 g of ready-made orecchiette
- a pinch of salt and 6 tablespoons of warm water, for the dough
- 400 g of turnip tops (cime di rapa), roughly chopped
- 8 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves of garlic and red chilli pepper
- 4 small anchovy fillets
Method
1. If you are making the pasta. Work the semolina and flour with the salt and warm water as you would bread dough. Roll into long ropes, cut discs of 2.5–3.5 cm, and drag each one across a floured board with your index finger to make it concave. When you get good at it you can use up to eight fingers at once. Let them rest for three to five hours.
2. Cooking together. Bring plenty of salted water to the boil and put in the orecchiette. After about five minutes add the washed and chopped turnip tops, and let them boil together until both are done.
3. The sauce. Meanwhile heat the oil gently with the garlic and chilli, add the anchovy fillets and let them dissolve into the oil.
4. Together. Drain pasta and greens, dress with the oil, and serve.
The anchovies are not optional. They do not make the dish taste of fish: they dissolve completely and give the savoury depth that a plate of pasta and green vegetable would otherwise lack. Leaving them out is what makes a home version taste flat.
What are cime di rapa? Turnip tops — the leaves, stems and unopened flower buds of the turnip plant, slightly bitter. In Puglia they are a winter vegetable, and the season runs roughly from November to March. Broccoli rabe is the closest thing outside Italy.
To make the pasta yourself, see home-made orecchiette.
