In late 2021 I fell in love with a relatively obscure dish, Pasta alla Norcina. Unknown to many in the New York metro area as it deviates from the red sauce-heavy dishes found in most of our local restaurants, it was clear I needed to create an instructional video and recipe to help bring this recipe to our audience. Doing so was not without its challenges.

Watch on YouTube

https://youtu.be/--kYih27ATg

Pasta alla Norcina hails from the town of Norcia in the southeastern part of Umbria, the region nestled in the center of Italy and bordered by Lazio, Tuscany, Marche, and Abruzzo.

The town itself is known for its pork, and the sausage used for pasta alla Norcina, salsiccia di Norcia.

This sausage consists of pork, garlic, white wine, and a touch of nutmeg - nothing like the fennel or spicy sausages more commonly found near my home on Long Island.

Black truffles can also be found near Norcia making them a component of this dish, when in season.

The scarcity and impracticality of these ingredients make it next to impossible for the everyday person to create a truly authentic version of this dish.

In my effort to help shine a spotlight on pasta alla Norcina, I soon realized I had to find ways to improvise and make do with the ingredients available to me.

In this episode, we discuss why pasta alla Norcina is relatively unknown in the US and go into greater detail on the challenges the ingredients present.

We talk through and provide solutions to the ingredients and discuss how best to recreate as authentic a dish as possible for you, the home cook.

Resource Links

Pasta Bolognese Recipe

Pasta alla Norcina Recipe

Chicken Marsala Recipe

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Transcript

Intro

James (00:00):Welcome back to the Sip and Feast podcast. Today we're going to talk about one of Italy's most underrated pastas. I don't know if that's right. I think every region of Italy thinks that they have the best pasta dishes. So, probably it could be what I would say Americans would think is one of Italy's most underrated pasta dishes. That's probably a more accurate statement, right, Tara?

Tara (00:23):I think the reason we would assign the word underrated to this pasta is because it's not found here in the US. For us, it's underrated because we haven't heard enough about it.

James (00:36):That makes sense completely. So, not to beat a dead horse, but the immigrants that all came to America from 1900 to 1920, it's like five million of them. Almost all of them came from … everybody knows Sicily, Naples, Calabria, Southern Italy, and they didn't come from the area that the dish we're talking about today, which is pasta Norcina, which is Umbria.

Tara (01:00):That's right.

Pasta Norcina background

James (01:01):So, Tara, give people a background on this dish, so our listeners can actually picture what we're talking about and where we're talking about.

Tara (01:09):Norcia, which is where pasta alla Norcina comes from, is a town in the southeastern part of Umbria, which is the region that is north of Rome, but south of Tuscany. So, somewhere kind of like in the middle of the country, certainly not where most of the Italian immigrants came from in the immigrant waves in the late 1800 and early 1900. And Norcia is actually famous for its pork.

James (01:43):Okay.

Tara (01:43):Were you aware of that?

James (01:44):I am aware of that, but I don't think our audience is, so go on.

Tara (01:50):Okay. The pork that is used, or the sausage, I should say, the sausage that is used for pasta alla Norcina uses a sausage that's really just found in Norcia and it's called salsiccia di Norcia. It's different from Italian sausage known here in the US in that it's made with garlic, white wine and actually a touch of nutmeg.

James (02:17):That sounds like a great one. And places here at the specialty stores that we go to, that we frequent, they will have 10, 15 different types of sausage, especially those Italian specialty stores. But I don't ever remember seeing a sausage like this there. Have you?

Tara (02:36):No, not at all. Not at all. And I think what we're going to get into in a little bit are some of the challenges when making pasta alla Norcina, and this is certainly one of them, but we'll talk about how you can navigate those challenges and make adaptations to make the dish at home.

James (02:55):Yeah, we'll talk about that and a little backstory on this dish. The reason we wanted to tell you about this one, and I think we're going to do a lot of these where they're recipe-focused, these episodes, for the future, we want to make them topically relevant to you where right now it's getting cool out. This is the time of year you would be making this one.

(03:13):Why are we picking this one? This one had a big effect on us in the sense that it was one of the first videos that actually did really well for the channel. I think even to this day, our video probably has substantially more views than any of our competitors' on YouTube. And I think part of that is simply the way we titled the video, which was what, Tara?

Tara (03:32):The Most Underrated Pasta Ever.

James (03:35):It's funny, we went with that title. And the reason I went with that title… and I do hate click-baity titles, but I knew if I wrote Pasta Norcina, that you weren't going to click on it, because it is that obscure here in America.

(03:49):We have more Italian restaurants here in Long Island and in basically this corridor of America, which encompasses a little bit of Connecticut, Northern Jersey and the five boroughs, there are just thousands of restaurants, and I've been to hundreds of these restaurants in my life, living here for all but three of the 40, almost 45 years of my life. I've never come across this dish on a menu until relatively recently.

(04:18):Now, obviously the people didn't… They might've started queuing off YouTube videos. The success of it. I'm not positive, but it was kind of coincidental when I saw it in a place I believe out East. And then we have an actual place here that opened that's very special occasion place, expensive, that is called Osteria Umbra, believe it or not. And I believe they have it on the menu too, I would think.

Tara (04:45):I think they have it as a special. So, it's not a recurring thing on the menu.

James (04:50):I always try to find new dishes that I can make for you, and then I would do a little bit of research. When I did that research, and we're going to get into it in a little bit, there would be some hiccups for the average person trying to make it.

(05:04):What I did, and this is essentially what every Italian immigrant did who came to this country, I modified it. And we get a lot of angry comments saying that the recipe is not exact, and we'll go into that in a bit, why it's going to be hard to make it exact, but it doesn't mean it's going to be any less good. It's a delicious dish, and I really want you to make it for your family.

(05:27):I got so many satisfied comments with this one, Tara. You see them all the time, and it's just one of the greatest pasta. And it's a full meal because we're in America. Obviously we're not eating a little bit of pasta. That's a big difference. You would make a whole batch of this for you and your family.

Tara (05:45):Yeah, it's a good one, and definitely because it has that little touch of nutmeg in it, I think it's perfect for the fall.

James (05:53):I don't think I'm selling it adequately for you. I don't think I am. I'm going to give it one more shot here. It is decadent, it is hardy, it is creamy. The combination of the sausage and the white wine and the creaminess of it. Did I already say creamy? I think I did.

Tara (06:15):Yeah.

James (06:16):All right. Well, and the nutmeg, and I didn't even put truffles on it, which is how It's supposed to be done.

Tara (06:24):That was a little outside of our budget.

James (06:25):And it's outside of a lot of-

Tara (06:25):Most people's budget.

James (06:31):… maybe your budget it's outside of, and that's part of what… We're doing this for you, not for me. I'm not going to sit here whipping out a $500 truffle and telling you that my dish is going to be better than yours. I want you to make the exact same dish that I'm making.

Challenges to making the authentic version

Tara (06:47):I think we should go over some of the challenges in making what would be a, "authentic pasta alla Norcina" for the everyday people here in the US.

James (06:59):Let's define authentic. Let's rattle it off quickly what makes it authentic. I have actually the Umbria Tourist Board's recipe. You want me to do that quickly or do you want to go into it?

Tara (07:09):No. You can read it.

James (07:10):All right, the major sticking point is the use of cream versus ricotta, and that's where we will get the biggest haters in the comments section. All right. So, I'm going to read you. This site is in Italian. You can use Google Translate to translate it into English. So, this is a legit site. This is from Italy. This is actually the site of Umbria.

(07:39):So, short or long pasta, 400 grams. That's about a little less than a pound. Sausage, about 300 grams. Everything here is a little less than a pound. So, you just scale up if you want. Cooking cream. Okay, so that's Panna da Cucina, all right? That's the cream that they use in Italy.