Orecchiette (1) : pasta with love inside

During Summer days (I am not reporting Scotland this time) lovers swarm together and enjoy reciprocal company in several activities: I remember that when my parents once went for three days to Saragozza (where Charlemagne imposed the strength of his empire, at least in the Chanson de Roland), whereas my sister was in Southern France, I had the house on my own and I was able to invite over the girl that would have become my girlfriend. Sometimes coincidences are so fruitful!
At that time, I did not fully realized how much we both loved cooking and staying in the kitchen together. So, the first culinary date spotted me as the only attendant and I made it out well with the different dishes.
Afterwords, we shared our common passion that concurred to make our bonds tighter, because it is emotional, intense and particularly charming. We keep cooking often together and once she taught me how to prepare home made orecchiette, a typical pasta format of her region, Puglia again. Orecchiette literally means little ears.

Mix up 300 ml of water, a pinch of salt (10ish gr)

and 600 gr of durum wheat semolina: knead a loaf

and then cut it into pieces. Manipulate them as snakes.

Cut the snakes into little pillows and produce the gesture

you are looking in this picture that I found in

http://www.semplicementepeperosa.com/

the correct verb should be to flip them over, and 

expert chefs use also a knife to obtain this result.

Four arguments from the weakest to the strongest

that shall convince you to produce yourself in

hand made orecchiette:

it is beautiful to do the orecchiette

 with the person you love,

because it take less time (1), you laugh a lot 

for all the wrong orecchiette that come out (2),

it is time spent making food love (3),

and finally because cooking-eating-sharing

puts you on an equal level of enjoyment (4).

From 4 to 6 people should be able to 

enjoy this amount of orecchiette.

What if you are very lazy and you prefer to buy them directly in a shop or a supermarket? First of all shame on you, but secondly I can provide some useful commercial suggestions:

Known in the rest of the world:

in my opinion their quality is acceptable

but not excellent.

For an industrial product these are very good orecchiette.

Garofalo

Saclà is another major Italian brand,

famous especially for antipasti,

yet this pack price is a bit to high

for my personal taste (2,10£)

Caroli and Fioccata: two pasta factory

that produce orecchiette employing methods that

appear to be more traditional.

Fiorillo

Tesco finest* 1,65£

During the next post, I shall try to prepare two different toppings: both of them will bring out the shape of the orechiette. And this effort will remind me how sweet will again be cooking with my favourite co-chef.