Showing posts with label bigoli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bigoli. Show all posts

31 May 2007

Bigoli for ever and ever

Bigoli con asparagi

I've just realized that I've never spoke of Bigoli on this blog!!! That's incredible!
Since the first bite I had of this wonderful pasta I was in love!
Let's go back in time... It was our first tour in Veneto, winter of 2002 or 2003, and we were in a nice little restaurant in Verona, near the (hypothetical) Juliet's balcony (Juliet of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet). It was a mid week lunch, crowded, and while my husband was choosing among the many meat dishes with polenta on the side, I was heading towards the pasta list. I've decided for Bigoli con sugo di anatra (Bigoli with duck sauce).
The dish arrived in front of me and I was lying pure heaven! A steaming plate of thick, rough, home made egg spaghetti (Bigoli) with a dense tomato and duck sauce. The aroma was incredible... And the taste...
Most of the time non-Italians have difficulty to understand that each shapes and types of pasta as a flavour of its own... That duck sauce could only exist WITH that bigoli, not with normal spaghetti, even less with short pasta, may be it could have a little life with fresh egg tagliatelle, but with those bigoli it was just the nearest to perfection I've ever tasted!

I would love to make that duck sauce again, but to constraint my bimonthly need for Bigoli I have to find compromises...

Serves 4 (2 in there me at the table...)
500 g of fresh Bigoli (sorry, I buy them, but may be one day I will try to make them)
200 g of asparagus, thickly sliced
1 robiola (around 100 g)

Bring to the boil a large quantity of water. When it's begging to boil, add sea salt.
Add the asparagus and the bigoli. Cook it for 8 minutes.
In the mean while, lay the robiola in a big bowl, pour over it a ladle of the pasta water, and mix it.
Drain pasta and asparagus, add it to the bowl and mix t well before to serve it.