225BatonRouge.com - Blogs

Ever since I got back from a four-day eat-fest in San Francisco a couple of months ago, I’ve been fantasizing about orecchiette pasta. My hosts ordered it, along with about 65 other dishes, at a marathon Italian dinner for eight at Scala’s Bistro. Chewy and round (shaped like little ears), sauced lightly with garlic, olive oil, spicy ground sausage and something green (broccoli rabe?), this simple dish was nirvana. It was a bummer I had to share it with a bunch a women I didn’t know very well – otherwise I would have scarfed it down like a big ol’ Hoover. I’d had orecchiette only one other time – in Rome when it thankfully appeared in front of me after I’d pointed to a bunch of gibberish on the menu and hoped for the best. It blew me away then, too, and ever since, I’ve wanted to know this little pasta a whole lot better.

So, far from both Rome and San Francisco and not having seen it on menus around here (correct me – please - if I’m wrong), I set out to recreate the Scala’s version. While my normal tendency would have been to turn to FoodTV.com for one of Chef Mario Batali’s pompously pure recipes, I decided to go it alone. (If you’ve tuned it lately to this blog, it would be the big no-recipe experiment of the week.)

Result: What sat before me on my dining room table was not what I had at Scala’s. I guess I have Columbus, Ga., in my genes, not Apulia, the region where Little Ears hail. As such, I concocted a tasty enough supper, but one that lacked that mysterious blending of flavors found in authentic pasta dishes, where the individuality of each ingredient has given itself up for a mysteriously fabulous overall flavor you can’t really put your finger on.

For my orecchiette, I sautéed ground sausage, three cloves of garlic, three chopped fresh tomatoes, some olive oil and a handful of chopped spinach (no rabe around ) – all very nice flavors, but they sat there on the pasta, each independent of the other, with no magical melding at work. What did I miss? I can only speculate. Maybe Scala’s used mail-order anchovy paste or an ancient recipe for house-made veal sausage. Maybe food like this just tastes better on the road.

Eat on.