Grandma's hands rolling dough on the floured pastry board, beside freshly made orecchiette

Our Vieste guides

Grandma's
orecchiette

Semolina, water and patient hands: this is how the symbol of Apulian cooking is born. We'll share the recipe the way Grandma made it, one gesture at a time, so you can take a little of Apulia home with you.

A guide by the Villa Ulimare family

Enlarge:
The pastry board
Enlarge:
The rope of dough
Enlarge:
The gesture
Enlarge:
One by one
Enlarge:
The rows

Grandma's hands shaping an orecchietta — From our kitchen

Try it at home

For 2, 4 or 6 people
Grandma's recipe
Quantities, ingredients and every gesture, step by step.
Go Grandma's recipe
Winter and summer
The sauce
Turnip tops, or tomato and cacioricotta on burnt wheat.
Go The sauce

A dedication from the heart

Thank you, Grandma

Before we begin this journey through flour and tradition, I want to give these words to the wind, the only one able to carry them all the way up there, into the hands of an extraordinary woman: my grandmother.

To her I owe the craft, the patience and the love of simple, genuine things. What you are about to read I owe to her memory and to her wise hands.

Every orecchietta is a little different from the next, like everything made with the heart: that is its perfect imperfection.

With all my heart: thank you, Grandma.
Raffaele

Freshly made orecchiette, golden with semolina

The orecchietta's ID card

Made of: Re-milled durum wheat semolina and water
Size: About 2.5 cm, shaped like a little shell
Other names: In Bari “strascinate”, in Taranto “recchietedde”
The secret: The rough surface, which holds on to the sauce
Recognised as: A traditional food product of Apulia

The recipe

How many people?

People246

For the dough

200400600 g of re-milled durum wheat semolina
100200300 ml of lukewarm water, roughly
A pinch of salt, if you like: many grandmothers only put it in the cooking water

For the sauce

Fresh turnip tops, cleaned
Gargano's Dauno PDO extra virgin olive oil
A clove of garlic and a few anchovy fillets in oil
Chilli and toasted breadcrumbs, if you like them

The water should weigh about half as much as the semolina: pour it in a little at a time, because every semolina drinks a bit more or a bit less.

The hands

Step by step

Orecchiette have no birth certificate: some say they came from Provence with the Angevins, others that they were born in Sannicandro di Bari. A 16th-century document, kept in Bari, already mentions them. In Bari's old town, on Via Arco Basso, women still make them on their doorsteps.

The well
Pour the semolina onto the wooden pastry board, make a hollow in the middle and add the lukewarm water a little at a time.
The dough
Knead with the heel of your hand for about ten minutes, until the dough is smooth and firm. Then let it rest for 15 to 30 minutes under a cloth.
The rope
Pinch off a piece and roll it under your fingers until it is as thick as a pencil. Cut it into pieces of about 1 cm.
The drag
With a round-tipped knife, drag each piece towards you: the dough curls up like a shell.
The flip
Rest the shell on the tip of your thumb and turn it inside out: there's the little dome of the orecchietta.
The wait
Cook them straight away, or leave them to dry on a tea towel dusted with semolina, hollow side down.

The sauce

Two seasons, two dishes

In Apulia the vegetable garden decides the sauce: turnip tops in winter, tomatoes in summer.

Enlarge:

In winterfrom October or November to March

Orecchiette with turnip tops

Cook the turnip tops in salted water and, after a few minutes, add the orecchiette: they cook together. In a frying pan, warm the oil with the garlic and let the anchovies melt.

Drain everything straight into the pan and toss for a minute. If you like, a pinch of chilli and the toasted breadcrumbs: once they were called “the poor man's cheese”.

The Apulia Region lists the dish among its traditional food products.

Enlarge:

Dark burnt-wheat capunti with chunks of tomato and grated cacioricotta

In summerwhen the tomatoes are ripe

Burnt-wheat orecchiette or capunti with fresh tomato and cacioricotta

Fresh tomatoes in chunks, just tossed in a pan with extra virgin olive oil, a clove of garlic and a few basil leaves.

Drain the pasta straight into the sauce and, on the plate, a snowfall of grated cacioricotta.

Burnt wheat gives the pasta its dark colour and toasted flavour: you can read where it comes from just below.

Enlarge:

Two notes

Grano arso: burnt wheat, the flour of the poor

After the harvest, when the stubble was burnt in the fields, the poorest farmers went back to glean: they gathered the grains left on the ground, blackened by the fire, and ground them at home. The result was a dark flour with a toasted flavour, mixed with durum wheat semolina.

Today burnt wheat no longer comes from fire in the fields: the grains are toasted and then milled, and the aroma recalls hazelnut and coffee. In 2023 the Apulia Region added the strascinato di grano arso of Canosa di Puglia to its traditional products: a pasta similar to orecchiette, made with 30% burnt-wheat flour.

And capunti?They are the long cousins of orecchiette: a thin rope of dough, cut into 7–8 cm pieces and dragged across the board with three fingers, which leave three hollows. Open like a pea pod, they hold the sauce.

Did you know?