stringozzi with olives and mushrooms

stringozzi con olive e funghi

Stringozzi is a hard wheat, string-like pasta, made with egg white.

for 6

pasta dough

200 g Tipo ‘00’ pasta flour

250 g semolina flour, plus extra for dusting

1 large, organic free-range egg white

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons Maldon salt

80 ml water

olive sauce

400 g black olives, pitted and roughly chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

500 g flat field mushrooms, finely sliced

3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped

2 dried red chillies, crumbled

Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

80 ml double cream

to serve

100 g unsalted butter

2 large fresh red chillies, seeded and chopped

100 g Parmesan, freshly grated

To make the pasta, mix the two flours together and place in a food processor or mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the egg white and olive oil, salt and water and knead until the pasta comes together to a firm dough, about 5 minutes. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 45 minutes or longer.

To make the olive sauce, heat the olive oil in a medium thick-bottomed saucepan, then add the mushrooms. Fry, stirring over a high heat, until the mushrooms start to brown. Add the garlic, stir and season with the dried red chilli, salt and pepper. Remove from the heat. When the mushrooms are cool, put them into a food processor and pulse-chop roughly. Add the olives and parsley and pulse together very briefly.

To prepare the dough for cutting into ‘strings’, cover your surface with semolina flour. Use a pasta machine. Divide the dough into three. One piece at a time, put a piece of dough through the widest setting on the machine ten times, folding into three and turning the sheet each time to make a thick piece of dough. Keep the machine on this setting until the dough feels silky. Only then start to reduce the setting gradually down to 4 or 2.5 mm thick, ie a thick sheet. Put the thick sheet through the narrowest cutters to form strings. Alternatively cut by hand as narrowly as you can.

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil, add 1 tablespoon salt and cook the pasta until al dente, about 3–4 minutes. Drain, keeping back a little of the pasta water. Return to the pan with the butter.

Heat the olive sauce gently and add the cream. Stir in the buttery stringozzi, turn over to coat evenly and serve with a little chopped fresh red chilli and freshly grated Parmesan.