Homemade Casarecce Pasta

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Just flour and water and my Kenwood Kitchen Machine with a new bronze die made for a wonderful evening.

After making my first batch of homemade maccheroni with my Kenwood Kitchen Machine, I finally received the casarecce die. It came through the mail yesterday in a red showcase like a rare coin. The same day I made by first batch, using only flour and water.

Casarecce, also known as caserecce or caserecci, are traditional scroll pasta from Southern Italy with an S-shape designed to grab as much sauce as possible. The term casarecce means 'homemade' but until yesterday I had never seen it outside a shop.

Start by mixing 100 gr semolina flour per person and and a little water in the kitchen machine using the K hook used for pastry dough. Put as little water as possible so your dough will remain very dry and crumbly. You can also add a little salt and olive oil.

Gradually add more water until you reach a crumbly texture which you can form into a ball if you press it in your hand but is still very dry. If you overdo it and the crumble turns into a pudding, just add more flour. Too soft a dough and your pasta will collapse and stick. Too hard and the machine will blow up and burn and that will ruin your dinner.

Assemble the pasta extruder with the casarecce bronze die and the Archimedes screw that will push the dough through the die.

My first four casarecce are slowly coming out the extruder. What an emotion!

Using the built-in guillotine, I cut down the casarecce four by four to an arbitrary length.

Using my casarecce in my Kappabashi-Dori-bought Japanese strainer I immerged the casarecce in a pot of salted boiling water. They were cooked in under a minute. Maybe they should have dried for a couple hours as they were rather soft. But so delicious!

A full plate of freshly made casarecce in a gorgeous amatriciana sauce with real guanciale. What a treat!