Here’s our latest homemade pasta creation: fileja, a tube-shaped noodle that comes from the province of Calabria, in the “toe” of mainland Italy. We figured that if we were going to make a pasta shape native to that region we should also pair it with a local sauce, and so we decided on one made from Calabrian chiles. These peppers (known in the local dialect as peperoncino) set Calabrian cuisine apart as the spiciest food in the entire country, and since we like spicy, we were happy to get a chance to experiment with this new sauce and pasta. Here we’ll walk you through the entire process, from making the noodles to cooking the sauce, so join us on this pasta adventure!
You’ll need:
- 00 flour
- Semloina flour
- 2 zucchini
- An eggplant
- A pint of cherry tomatoes
- 15 ounces of Calabrian chiles packed in oil
- Garlic
- Olive oil
- A bunch of basil
- Parmesan cheese
** You’ll also need a ferretto to shape the fileja – we bought one from Consiglio’s Kitchenware
To make the pasta dough, follow the first two steps here. Once your dough has rested and is ready to go, cut it into four equal sections and roll one section out into a rope by pressing your fingertips at the center of your dough and moving them outwards as you roll (leave the other pieces covered in plastic wrap until you’re ready to use them). Keep going until your rope is around 1/2 inch thick, then cut the dough into one-inch pieces.
Use the same method, this time with your fingertips slightly damp, to roll your pieces out further until each one is about the width and length of a green bean. Then take your ferretto and place it across each piece at a slight angle (so, not perfectly parallel to the piece of dough), smushing it into the dough a little …
… then roll the ferretto back and forth several times until the dough roughly curls around the ferretto. You don’t want perfect spirals, just a somewhat curled shape. Pull the pasta gently off the ferretto and place each piece on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper that you’ve dusted with semolina flour.
Let the pasta dry for an hour, and then cook it in salted boiling water for 3 to 5 minutes. Fish it out of the water with a spider strainer to drain.
Meanwhile, to make the vegetables for this pasta, dice up your zucchini and eggplant, slice each cherry tomato in half, and finely chop 2 garlic cloves. Place the eggplant and zucchini in a large cast iron pan over medium high heat with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and cook for 4 minutes or so, until the eggplant starts to soften, then add in the garlic and cook for another minute. Place in the tomatoes, along with some salt and pepper, and cook for a few minutes until they start to wilt. Take the pan off the heat and stir in all your basil leaves.
And now for the Calabrian chile paste: place all of your chiles, along with the oil they’re packed with, into a mortar and pestle. Add in 3 cloves of garlic and grind everything together until you have a smooth paste, adding in extra olive oil as needed until you get a good consistency.
Mix the chile paste into your cooked pasta, then stir in the vegetables. Grate 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese and stir that in too, then you can serve up your fileja topped with a little more Parmesan.
We’ll admit that shaping each individual piece of fileja was kind of a process – you have to roll the dough out twice, then carefully use your ferretto to twist and curl it into the right shape. But we’d never tried this particular pasta before, so it was a fun experience. And we enjoyed this pasta, which plumps up nicely when cooked, paired with a spicy sauce and some hearty vegetables. It was a good weekend dinner and some good hands-on practice to shape it entirely by hand – and we’ll be sure to share with you more of our pasta explorations!