I was reminded of this recipe by a recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in last Thursday’s International Guardian.
I used my own homemade chilli oil. To make it add some dried chillis to a bottle of olive oil and leave it for a couple of weeks. If you can’t wait for 2 weeks, use fresh chilli or chilli flakes.
If you want to know how to butterfly squid or cuttlefish, check out Hugh’s article here. Or watch this video
Serves 4
grilled cuttlefish ingredients
2 medium cuttlefish (or squid) — cleaned and butterflied
chilli oil
1 large clove garlic — finely chopped
salt and pepper
Chop off the tentacles and butterfly the cuttlefish
Divide each set of tentacles into 2
Season the cuttlefish with the garlic, salt and pepper and a good slug of chilli oil
Heat a grill pan to the hottest temperature you can manage
This is the first dish I had cooked for me in Pulgia. Orecchiette is the most traditional pasta of the region. The most popular way to serve them is with turnip tops (cime di rape) , but this way is also common. Feel free to leave out the chilli. This dish uses ricotta dura which is a type of aged ricotta from Puglia. It has a fairly mild, but distinct flavour. Don’t try this using regular soft ricotta, it won’t be the same. It would probably be ok with a mild pecorino if you can’t find ricotta dura. Serves 4
Orrecciete with tomatoes and ricotta dura ingredients
There are 1001 different versions of penne arrabbiata. Here’s mine. (So does that now make 1002? 🙂 ) The name means angry penne because of the chilli. Feel free to adjust the chillies if you prefer it milder or hotter. I even heard of someone cooking it without any chilli! They still insisted on calling it penne arrabbiata though. I would have thought penne felice would have been more appropriate 🙂 Serves 4