Pasta: Orecchiette Pasta With Sausage Sundried Tomatoes Basil And Scrambled Eggs

Pasta: Orecchiette Pasta

 

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The first time I learned of Orecchiette was when I worked at an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles called Stomboli! It was owned by a man named Frank Mele' and he was from Bari, in the north of Italy. The Pasta originates from Puglia which is in Southern Italy. In Italian the word orecchio means ear. The Orecchiette is bowl shaped and about the size of a nickel. When you use Orecchiette try to find a superior brand as you can find Orecchiette in the stores but what you are looking for is Orecchiette that has cuts on the bowl shaped bottom of this pasta as this helps the Orecchiette hold the sauce you use and Orecchiette that is smooth on the bottom is just not as good! Now I know this is a nice little snippet of foodie history but there is a reason for it. Please allow me to elaborate. This weeks recipe is a pasta dish made with Orecchiette pasta. I chose this Pasta type because I have so much pasta in my house the Prime Minister of Italy would be proud!

I have SOOOOO much stuff in my pantries and cabinets that I could survive the Zombie Apocalypse for some time without having to go out and forage for something to eat! If you don't believe me then you should watch my video called Tag Your It. On the other hand of being SOOOOO well stocked is that it can become a foodie administrative nightmare! And it has! So this weekend I decided to go though all my kitchen cabinets and pantries and check dates and reorganize them to make them more useful to me at this point.

I also decided that if I am going to be reorganizing that I would not be buying food each week to make recipes with because I obviously have enough stuff hunkered down in my house that I could make recipes for weeks without having to go shopping. Well, this is what I will be doing for a couple of weeks or more in order to thin the herd of stuff I have in my pantries and cabinets so that I can refresh them later.

So this week I must have found like ten bags of Orecchiette pasta. Man! I had no idea! Ten bags! Then when I saw the rest of the pasta I had I thought to myself that I might as well open an Italian restaurant at this point! So this week it's going to be Pasta. This week I am going to be making Pasta Orecchiette With Spicy Andouille Sausage, Oil Cured Sundried Tomatoes, Fresh Basil And Scrambled Eggs! This Pasta dish is not a traditional Italian or Sicilian Pasta dish but it is made of influenced from both and I promise this Orechiette pasta dish will be delicious!

Now to be totally honest in Apulia and Puglia Italy this type of Pasta is generally served with chopped greens and other vegetables and if memory serves the combination of vegetables will be different between Apulia and Puglia and depending on which city you are in there might not even be a sauce on your Orecchiette. My Orecchiette will not have a sauce on it as the sauce will come from the juice of the sausage and the beef stock used to do the final stage of cooking of this dish. I think Mr. Mele' would be proud of me if he were still here today and hopefully he is no  matter where he is! Here's the video! Enjoy!

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