Sicilian Cartwheel Driver Pasta

Keywords:	Pasta ¦ Italian Cuisine ¦ Cheese ¦ Sicilian Cuisine ¦ Cult ¦ Fast 'Slow Food'
Translations:	Deutsch
Feedback:	32 comments - leave yours!

This could be one of the most simple Sicilian pasta recipes were it not for the caciocavallo [catchaw cavALaw] cheese that is so hard to get outside Italy. But if you can find it, pasta alla carrettiera, the cartwheel driver pasta, will drive you straight up to heaven.

Pasta alla carretiera [KAray tyayra]
Main course for 2
500gr / 1lb paccheri or other large tubular pasta
1 bunch basil
4 garlic clove or as many you can withstand
200gr caciocavallo cheese
1 small onion
4 tomatoes or 1 14-oz / 400gr can of tomato purée
Salt and pepper

You don't see caciocavalli for sale very often outside of Italy, so when I saw this one on an Italian stand at my local farmers' market on Saturday, I decided to buy the whole thing. With its obscene shapes (they come by twos hanging on each end of a string), that cheese certainly made an effect. First order of business is to cut it in half lengthwise with the longest unserrated knife you have.

The cheese is a proud member of the mozzarella family, a so called pulled-curd cheese made in the shape of an elephantine tear-drop and then hanged on a stick for a couple month. A real signore of Southern Italian cheeses. The capo di tutti i capi, the boss of bosses of the caciocavallo family is the caciocavallo podolico, a cheese aged for up to 8 years until it turns red. It has never been seen in public for the last two decaded and I've never seen one. If a reader knows where I can get a caciocacallo podolico I'd be most interested!

On with the job now. Using your large knife, peel one cheese half. We'll keep the other one with the rind on so that we can store it in the fridge longer.

Grate coarsely.

Peel the garlic, remove the green sprout inside and crush.

Fry the garlic and onion in a little olive oil on medium high heat. Here I'm using a black La Chamba clay pot, a fine product made in Colombia. Cooking tomato sauces in earthenware is the very traditional way of doing in Italy, although I think the advantages are perhaps not as strong as usually said. But it's a great pot!

When the onion is soft, deglaze with a drop of any wine you have on hand.

In one sharp, self-confident movement, empty a can of chopped tomatoes into the pot. Many cooks are self-conscious about using canned tomatoes. They put the tomatoes in a little bowl and rush to hide the can. But who can really claim he's got access to quality ripe tomatoes all year round? I certainly don't. Even in the height of summer the fresh tomatoes I find taste more like red water baloons than real tomatoes. With the can at least you know what you get. Be shameless about it.

Crush the garlic and add to the pot.

Mix a little water in, toss, cover and simmer for 30 minutes or so.

To ensure that your basil remains fresh and does not turn black and soft, you need to actually slice it with a front-and-back-and front movement with a sharp knife. It just doesnt't cut it to chop it up-and-down like a guillotine. If you do this, you crush the edges of the basil leaves and your basil will blacken in less time than it takes to say cornuto. If you do this, you'll get to show off by calling it by its French technical name, chiffonade ([shee-faw-nad], with every syllable pronounced with the exact same length).

Should you add the basil while you cook or right before you serve? I've never been able to solve that question, and I always add basil both while the tomato sauce simmers and right before serving. After all, there is no such thing as too much basil, the herb of the kings, is there?

For most people oil is a necessary evil, something you just can't really totally eliminate when it comes to cooking. Then plan is to use as little as possible, right? Wrong. In Sicily, mamas flavor their tomato sauces with a generous amount of olive oil after they are almost cooked through. By generous I mean a 1dl / 0.3oz. Here I'm using a bottle I got from my friend Richard who visits the olive orchards in Tuscany. Very nice.

Cover and simmer on the lowest flame until you are ready with the pasta.

You can use all sorts of tubular pasta for this dish, as long as it is made from hard wheat and bronze extruded. Cook in your largest pot with a bit of salt and no oil.

Remove the still-slightly-undercooked pasta from the water with a sieve and place in the sauce.

I felt a moment of gastronomic guilt when I saw that one my paccheri had split open. Not so much for the pachero itself, but because the week before, in a luxury hotel where I had been invited to lunch, I sent back to the kitchen a plate of the same pasta as it was hopelessly overcooked. I didn't even have to taste, they looked overcooked from across the room. The maître d' came to me, more pissed off about the dish that had been served than about me sending it back, and said «You must understand it's a difficult pasta to cook, it takes 20 minutes.» I answered that I did understand, that I had ordered it more than 20 minutes ago and that clearly this one had cooked for a good 40 minutes and that if they were not able to cook them properly I could understand but then they should not put it on the menu. The maître d' admitted they precooked it and apologized. So when I saw that even in my kitchen I had ripped one pacchero open, you understand how I felt! But they were very bity and perfectly al dente.

Add the grated caciocavallo...

... the some of the op. cit. basil chiffonade.

Toss...

... and serve. You may curse like a cartwheel driver at never having eaten such ¬§°@#§°#@ damn good pasta before ever in your life.