Obviously, most people associate pasta with Italy or Italy with pasta. Either way it is a staple of the Italian cuisine no matter where you are in the world, especially in Italy. I always knew pasta as like, twelve different shapes served with different sauces. Spaghetti. Penne. Lasagna. Fusilli. Alfredo. Carbonara. Bolognese. Arrabbiata. You could mix and match to your taste. It seems I have a lot to learn about pasta. The first thing is that each region has a traditional pasta that is associated with it. In Bari, that shape is Orecchiette and It means ear. And when you see one, you know why. They can be made small, medium, or large, but the shape its the same no matter what. Today I need to speak about two things: “Strada de Orecchiette and fresh pasta shops. Some time last year, CBS Sunday Morning did an entire episode on food. El ad I already had our eye on Bari and the segment on Puglia probably cemented it, in case there was any doubt. During the episode the correspondent did these two things. First, he went to "Strada de Orecchiette" and then to a fresh pasta shop. Strada de Orecchiette (Orecchiette Street) as it is informally known, is a street in the old city section where cars are not allowed. There are some streets that are car accessible, but others are limited to scooter/moped/foot traffic only. Anyway, when you walk along this street you notice two things: pasta being sold in plastic bags, and older women working at wooden table tops rolling out dough and cutting pieces off the roll with a knife, shaping the dough with the knife (into the shapes of ears) and then flicking it away towards a drying screen.
Once the dough is dried it is sold as Orecchiette. If the weather is nice the ladies will sit out on the street rolling their dough and selling their pasta in front of the apartment. If the weather isn’t as nice, they will work inside with the door open ready to run out and sell pasta to any passersby who stops even for a moment. I will say that the speed these old hands work flicking their Orecchiette is impressive.
The other thing I want to talk about is fresh pasta shops. These are places that make many different kinds of pasta fresh every day, and when you buy some, the pasta are the consistency of raw pie crust dough. You order it by the kilo and the cooking time is a bit less than if it was from a box. We found, at some point, a list of the best fresh pasta shops in the city and wouldn’t you know that number one is the same one that CBS Sunday Morning visited. It is about a 15 minute walk from the apartment and I am able to get our pasta needs filled once a week. Once I leave this city, it is things like buying my pasta at a fresh pasta shop and walking down “Strada de Orecchiette'' that I will miss the most. Or remember the most. Or both.
Thanks for a new appreciation
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