Pici with Garlic Sauce, or Pici all'Aglione: I recently got a request for pici all'aglione, pici with a garlicky pasta sauce (aglio means garlic, and gives an idea of just how garlicky this is) from the Montepulciano/Montalcino area south of Siena. Pici are hand-made, somewhat irregular strands of flour-and-water pasta (as opposed to egg pasta) that are about an eighth of an inch thick. If you can't find them, use either bucatini or other thick-stranded pasta.
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
- See Below
Preparation:
A First recipe:Pici, olive oil, garlic, bread crumbs, hot pepper, salt and parsley.
Bring pasta water to a boil and begin cooking the pici.
Heat quite a bit of olive oil in a high-sided skillet, add very finely minced garlic, and when it begins to brown sprinkle in bread crumbs; continue cooking, stirring constantly, until they're golden. At this point add finely shredded hot pepper and salt to taste. By now the pici should be al dente; drain them, transfer them to the skillet while the colander is still dripping a little, and move the skillet as you would if you were flipping an omelet to coat the strands with the sauce. Dust with lots of finely minced parsley and serve.
A Second recipe
This is more of a definition:
Aglione is a soffritto (a sautéed mixture) in which several cloves of garlic are sautéed with shredded hot pepper, with the addition, at the end (but not always) of a little tomato sauce. It's a spicy sauce that works well with home-made pasta made with just flour and water but no eggs, and as such is peasant food.
