Strawberry Lorighittas with Manchego Cream Sauce

Strawberry Lorighittas with Manchego Sauce

Serves 3

It’s strawberry season! My wife and I recently spent the afternoon picking strawberries with my dad at a you-pick-it-style strawberry patch mere minutes from my parent’s house. Between us we must have picked nearly twenty pounds of lusciously red ripe strawberries. I knew I wanted to make strawberry pasta ever since I learned about how terrific a pair strawberries are with black pepper.

Lorighittas are a braided pasta from Sardinia. They’re quickly becoming my favorite handmade pasta shape, being  quite fun to make and to eat. The texture of the braids is especially tasty with a creamy cheese sauce. 

When making the lorighittas, take extra care not to over-hydrate your dough; you can avoid this by adding only a little bit of juice at a time. You might not even need the full amount. It’s not impossible to recover the dough if it turns out too wet, though it is an annoying outcome that you will want to avoid at all costs.

For the lorighittas:

• 1 cup semolina flour
• 1/3 cup strawberry juice (about 15 strawberries, husked and juiced)
• A couple pinches of freshly ground black pepper

For the Manchego cream sauce:

• 60 grams Manchego cheese, roughly chopped
• A glug of heavy cream
• 1/4 cup starchy pasta water
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Make the lorighittas: Add the semolina and the black pepper to a stand mixer bowl. Using the paddle attachment on the lowest setting, gradually add the strawberry juice 1 or 2 tablespoons at a time and mix until the dough resembles coarse sand. Remove the bowl from the mixer and squeeze the coarse mixture—it should clump together easily. Clump all of the flour into a dough mass and knead the dough on a work surface for 10 minutes. Cover the dough with an upside-down mixing bowl and let rest for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

The dough should feel quite supple at this time. Pinch off a teaspoon sized piece of dough and roll it into a uniformly thin snake, approximately 5 to 6 inches in length. Wrap the snake around your first three fingers for a total of two times. Remove the dough ring from your fingers. Weave the two dough loops through each other to create the braids. Set aside and continue until all of the lorighittas are formed. Ideally, you want to let the pasta dry out quite a bit before dropping it into the boiling water. It’s not mandatory, however; just be sure not to let your pasta pieces stick together.

Make the Manchego cream sauce: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. It should taste like the sea. Meanwhile, add the Manchego to a saute pan and set the heat to medium-high. Allow the cheese to melt, stirring occasionally. Add a dash of heavy cream if it starts to stick.

When the salted water reaches a roaring boil, add all of the lorighittas to the pot and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. If you skipped the pasta drying stage, then you should not let it boil for the full three minutes. Add a glug of heavy cream and 1/4 cup of starchy pasta water to the cheese and stir the cheese sauce. When the time is up, remove the pasta from the boiling water using a spyder or a sieve and place it directly into the saute pan with the cream sauce. Stir to coat, mixing in freshly ground black pepper, to taste. Serve hot, with additional freshly ground black pepper to garnish.