orecchiette al pomodoro e ricotta salata

There are actually quite a few ways to approach a 'simple' tomato pasta like this. The main choices are (1) the kind of tomatoes you use (tinned or fresh) (2) how you cook the fresh variety (roasted or in the pan) (3) whether you skin fresh tomatoes or not (3) how 'tomatoey' you want the final result, and (4) dry or fresh pasta.

I've cooked all of those variations and in all honesty you have to be very lucky in the U.K. to get bought (supermarket) tomatoes that are sweet with enough flavour for this dish. It's very easy to get blandish, slightly sharp tasting varieties... unfirtunately the only ideal solution is to grow your own.

On the cheese side, Ricotta Salata is a strange one. It's a hard version of the soft ricotta you may have seen - not quite as 'picante' and 'spicy' as pecorino but with its own flavour, which adds a kind of buttery milkiness when it's stirred into a sauce. Worth mentioning is that it's a cheese that never seems to melt and become part of a sauce; it just seems to sit there waiting to be noticed, which you will! Ricotta Salata is the 100% authentic Southern Italian choice though, so if you have 'purist' tendencies, it might be worth tracking down at a delicatessen. If you'd like something a little more flavourful and less expensive, choose pecorino.

But let's put all of that aside for a moment and concentrate on a couple of options - either using baby plum tomatoes cooked in the pan with their skins on, or a good quality tomato polpa (my preference is always Mutti). If fresh orecchiette aren't an option, use dry - my current preference is either making my own or buying pre-prepared fresh (Pasta Martimucci from my local delicatessen in London).

If you’ve never tried orecchiette and you’re looking for a different feel to a pasta dish, grab some today. They’re increasingly easy to find in the UK and worth tracking down at least once! The concensus amongst food historians seems to be that orecchiette first popped up in Southern Italy between the 12th and 16th centuries (possibly via Liguria and possibly a relation of Corzetti, but that's another story). There is some evidence that the ancient Romans ate a similar pasta shape, which they called ‘lixulae’, which also had a concave centre and were made with flour, water and cheese.

However they came to be, orecchiette give any pasta dish a different feel. I personally prefer sauces for orecchiette that are juicier and lighter, because the overall impression is that you’re eating a stodgier dish. However there are plenty of fans of cheesy, creamy or rich meaty combinations with orecchiette, and in fact this shape seems to go perfectly with almost any sauce or cooking method.

I cooked this dish with dry orecchiette but in recent months I’ve become converted to store-bought fresh ones - easier and quicker to cook and a much nicer eating experience....