Day 4: Orecchiette ragù

Anecdote

We had leftover frozen ragù sauce in the freezer from the week before. I will not be transcribing the recipe for that here as it's Ella Risbridger's and can be found in her marvellous book Midnight Chicken. All her recipes are intertwined with the most heart-breaking/warming anecdotes. I highly recommend if you're looking for a no-nonsense cooking book that reads equally well as a personal memoir.

If you've got a couple of hours on your hand, the boy who cooks has an oxtail ragù recipe. However, if you don't, there's also a lot of other simpler recipes out there.

Ingredients

Semolina dough (same as cavatelli):

• 200g of fine semolina flour (I recommend Asian/African supermarkets for this)

• 100g/ml of lukewarm lightly salted water

Recipe

Dough: see the section in cavatelli's recipe.

Essentially the only difference with orecchiette is that you drag a butter knife towards you, over the little pieces of dough (rolling it over itself) and then flip them inside out.

TIP: if you are short on time, I recommend that you just make bigger ears i.e. cut the pieces of dough a bit bigger.

The pasta then only takes around 2 minutes to boil in salted water. You then drain and transfer to the sauce and give it a small splash of pasta water to bind.

See photos below for the process and how to shape them: