With dried pasta rings, anellini or anelletti are generally smaller than anelli. But, homemade anellini pasta rings from Abruzzo are bigger. I guess it’s difficult to make very tiny ones by hand! How to make homemade anellini pasta rings. Making the rings isn’t too difficult. After kneading, allow the dough to rest, then cut off small pieces, roll them out into thin ‘snakes’, cut the snakes into 6-7cm lengths (2.5”), wrap them around your index or middle finger and seal the ends together. Step 2 gather the ingredients for the alla pecorara sauce. Freeze and cook from frozen. The Sicilians love their pasta! Each pasta has its own special sauce whether ragu – meat and tomato sauce, or marinara or besciamella – a white sauce. Each pasta has its own way of cooking or preparing and you don’t want to interchange or mix up the way you prepare your pasta dish! Baked anelletti is no exception.

I used a type of pasta called tripolini in this recipe. Tripolini pasta looks like small butterflies. It’s one of about 30 small soup pastas made in Italy. Italians call this sort of pasta ‘pastina’. Probably the most well-known types of pastina are orzo (risoni) and stelline (little stars). Of course, you can use any small soup pasta for this recipe including anellini or ditalini. Pasta named after past Italian colonies. In and around the Parma area of Emilia-Romagna, this classic dish is prepared by families to enjoy on special holidays, such as Easter and Christmas. The process for making anolini requires a couple of days of attentive and loving preparation. The name Tripolini actually derives from the Libyan city Tripoli which was the capital of the Italian colony Italian Tripolitania from 1911 to 1947. In the 1930s, a number of pastas were named after Italian colonies. These are Asabessi, Abissini, Bengasine and Tripoline (with an ‘e’) The latter are a long pasta, similar to Mafaldine but ruffled on only one edge. From what I can discover, Bengasine pasta is the same as Tripolini and Abissini looks like conchiglie (shells). Pasta maker La Molisana produces abissini rigati. Step 7 Mix all the ingredients together and add bay leaves, rosemary, salt and pepper. How to make this Tuscan Kale and white bean soup. To make the pasta for this recipe you will need both Italian ‘00’ soft wheat flour and durum wheat semolina flour. Most recipes call for equal amounts of both, plus eggs and sometimes water and olive oil too. I used 150g of each flour, 2 eggs, a little water and a teaspoon of olive oil. You can use 3 eggs instead of adding water and olive oil and all-purpose flour instead of the Italian ‘00’ flour. Put the flours and eggs in a bowl. Add salt, olive oil and water. Mix together until you have a dough. Knead the dough on a work surface. Let it rest and then make the pasta rings.This recipe makes enough for 2 generous portions of gluten free spaghetti hoops to have on toast (as a side dish they’ll go a bit further). If you need more or less simply double or halve the recipe. They are naturally gluten and dairy free, plus vegan too. Although I have read that this recipe originally had some meat in it, the majority of versions today are mostly vegetarian ones. The pasta is dressed with a tomato sauce mixed with sheep’s ricotta, sautéed vegetables and pecorino. Of course, pecorino isn’t actually vegetarian as it contains animal rennet. Strict vegetarians can leave it out or use a vegetarian hard cheese. Step 3 Make the tomato sauce. First sauté finely chopped onion, celery and carrot in olive oil. The tomato sauce in this recipe has a base or soffrito of finely diced and sautéed onion, carrots and celery. Soffritto is the Italian mirepoix and is used in many sauce, soup and stewed meat recipes. Before it’s cooked Italians refer to it as ‘battuto’. When the sauce is ready stir in the ricotta.

If you enjoy these hoops, I would be really grateful if you could leave a star rating or review on the recipe card below. Thank you! Despite the fact that Tuscany is famous for its beautiful and elaborate art and architecture, the traditional cuisine in this central Italian region is very rustic! Like other parts of Italy, the Tuscan kitchen is based on what Italians call ‘la cucina povera’ (the kitchen of the poor). In Italian, the word anello means ring. Hence, anellini are pasta rings. However, in most recipes for anelli, anelletti or anellini the pasta is dried rings of various sizes. This is the pasta that people outside of Italy associate with Campbell’s spaghetti Os or Heinz spaghetti hoops! It’s considered a traditional pasta variety in Sicily, where they use it in a baked pasta dish called anelletti al forno or timballo di anelletti. Italians also use pasta rings in soups and salads. Step 1 Make the anellini pasta rings So, anellini alla pecorara is a dish of a particular type of pasta and sauce eaten together. In Abruzzo, you can find fresh anellini to buy in many food stores. Interestingly, the pasta is sold as anellini alla pecorara or pecorara di Elice. Although, many locals still make this pasta themselves. Outside of the region, the only way to enjoy this dish in its authentic form is to use homemade pasta, which is what we did. What is anellini pasta? The anelletti pasta, little round circle pasta, is to be baked ONLY with a ragu sauce. This pasta is a baked anelletti pasta dish. You would not serve anelleti like you serve spaghetti, boiled to al dente and then served with a marinara sauce. Anelletti is to be baked in the forno or oven. So you could call this Forno Anelletti.I made the dough in the same way as other pasta doughs by mixing the flours then adding the eggs and olive oil and then water as required. Durum wheat semolina has a higher gluten content than soft wheat flour, so pasta dough made with it requires a bit more kneading to get it soft and pliable. Make the rings by wrapping thin 'snakes' of dough around your index finger and sealing the ends together. Anellini al Forno is a classic dish from Sicily. It’s perfect to make for Sunday dinners, holidays or any special occasion. You can substitute any small pasta, such as elbows, for the anellini, but the pasta rings are what make this dish authentic. After soaking and boiling the beans, if necessary, the next step is to wash, peel and chop the other veggies as needed. I used my Dutch oven to make this Tuscan soup, but you can use any heavy bottomed large soup pot. The word ‘pecora’ means sheep in Italian and alla pecorara means shepherd’s style. So, I imagine this dish got its name from the generous quantity of sheep’s ricotta and pecorino in it. Like many traditional Italian pasta recipes, anellini alla pecorara is a dish that originated in what the Italians call ‘la cucina povera’, meaning the peasant kitchen. It’s made with produce the peasants and farmers made or grew themselves. Thus, the vegetables they grew, the cheese they produced and the pasta they made themselves! Add tomato passata or chopped tomatoes to soffrito. Season, stir and simmer. How to make the pecorara sauce.

While beef is the traditional protein for the filling of anolini, you could definitely use another cut. Try pork shoulder, lamb shank, or the meat from a stewing hen.

In a sauce pot add 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, the chopped onion and the chopped garlic. According to tradition, ribollita was prepared on Fridays with all the leftover vegetables of the week cooked together with stale bread. Originally, ribollita wasn’t a vegetarian dish and contained pancetta or pork rind. Nowadays, most people make it without meat. Step 5 Add washed and chopped kale to pot and cook until the kale wilts. Homemade anellini pasta alla pecorara is another of these recipes. Of course. this doesn’t mean you can’t serve the pasta with other sauces. It just means it’s not traditional to do so.