Pasta alla Norcina is a typical Umbrian pasta dish. The name derives from the small village Norcia. Norcia is in the Sibillini mountains and famous for its sausages, cheeses and cold cuts.
People here are quite proud of their local kitchen and rightly so! Umbria also produces the best DOP olive oil of Italy, they say.
Tonight I’ve prepared Pasta alla Norcina which is very tasteful and easy to make.
Ingredients
Ingredients for 1 person:
– cooking cream
– white wine
– fresh sausage
– half onion
– short pasta
– olive oil
It is evident that by cooking for more people you need to use more of the above mentioned ingredients. Delicious as well is to add some truffle sauce or, even better, fresh truffle but I didn’t have that at home. Some people don’t use onion in this meal, and some people do. Each family uses their own recipe and it can be adjusted to any personal taste.
In the centre of Italy people eat “Paccheri”, that is a short pasta of whole grain. It is necessary to cook this pasta at least 13 minutes. For non Italian people I think even 15 minutes, but let’s eat the pasta “al dente”.
How to prepare the pasta
Boil the water with salt. In the meantime heat the olive oil in a pan. Add the chopped onion first over a medium heat for 5 minutes, add the sausage. Stir for a couple of minutes. Add a glass of white wine, keep stirring and let the wine evaporate. Add the cooking cream until you have a creamy sauce. Don’t cook the cream!
When the water boils you add the Paccheri.
One minute before the boiling time I add some cooking water to the sauce to heat it a little bit and to give the sauce extra body. When the pasta is ready add to the cream sauce, stir a couple of minutes. Add salt and peper, if necessay. Buon appetito!
I can recommend a good glas of red Umbrian wine with this pasta dish.
Lovely post. I would love to visit Norcia someday, it looks surreal
Norcia and Castelluccio di Norcia are wonderful! And good food as well 🙂
Che buona!!!! This dish I will try to recreate. We have pretty good Italian style pork sausages here too but it won’t be anything like yours!