Sardinian Malloreddus with Pecorino and Saffron | Malloreddus al Pecorino e Zafferano

Malloreddus al pecorino e zafferano is the plainest thing in the Sardinian pasta repertoire and the hardest to fake. There is no sausage, no tomato, no meat of any kind. Four elements reach the bowl: the ridged semola pasta, a warm saffron infusion, a great deal of finely grated Pecorino Sardo and black pepper. Everything rests on the emulsion between cheese fat, saffron water and the starch the pasta gives up, and there is nowhere for a mistake to hide.

The dish is often called a Sardinian cacio e pepe, which is close enough to be useful and wrong in one important way. Saffron is not a colouring here and not a garnish. Infused properly it carries a bitter honeyed note that sits underneath the sheep milk cheese and stops it turning flat and merely salty, which is what pecorino does on pasta when nothing answers it.

Cream has no place in it. The gloss that coats every ridge comes from cheese, saffron water and starch worked off the heat, exactly as a Roman cook builds cacio e pepe, and it takes about ninety seconds of real attention at the end. Those ninety seconds are the recipe.

Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 15 minutes. Saffron infusion: 10 minutes. Cook: 12 minutes. Total: about 40 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Sardinia, the Campidano plain and San Gavino Monreale.

The Story

The name comes from malloru, the Sardinian word for bull, so a malloreddu is a little bull or a calf. The shape is made from semola rimacinata and water alone, with no egg, pressed against a ridged basket called su ciuliri or against a grooved wooden board so that each small piece takes the lines that hold sauce. Sardinian households turned them out by the thousand for saints days and weddings, and the dried commercial version sold everywhere today still copies that hand ridged profile.

Saffron is the other half of the dish and it is genuinely local. Crocus sativus has been cultivated on the island since the medieval centuries, above all at San Gavino Monreale, Turri and Villanovafranca in the Campidano, and Sardinian saffron carries protected status. In Italy saffron is usually thought of as a Milanese ingredient for risotto. On the island it is older than that and it runs through savoury cooking and pastry alike, which is why it lands on pasta here without anyone finding it exotic.

Pecorino Sardo comes from the pastoral economy that shaped the interior of the island for centuries, where sheep outnumbered people and cheese was the currency of a household. This particular version of malloreddus belongs to families that had cheese and saffron but no meat to spare. That is why it survives unchanged: the festive versions with sausage got elaborated over time, while the cheese and saffron one had nothing left to remove.

Ingredients

For the pasta

• Dried malloreddus, Sardinian gnocchetti, 14 oz (400 g)

• Water for boiling, 5 qt (4.7 l)

• Fine sea salt for the water, 2 tsp (12 g)

For the saffron infusion

• Saffron threads, Sardinian if possible, 1/2 tsp lightly packed (0.4 g)

• Hot water, just off the boil, 3/4 cup (180 ml)

For the sauce

• Pecorino Sardo maturo, very finely grated, 4 oz (115 g)

• Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)

• Freshly ground black pepper, 1/2 tsp (1 g)

For finishing

• Pecorino Sardo, finely grated, 1/2 oz (15 g), reserved from the quantity above

• Saffron threads, 8 to 10, for the top

• Extra virgin olive oil, a few drops per bowl

Preparation

Step 1

Infuse the saffron and grate the cheese. Put the saffron threads in a small bowl, pour over the 3/4 cup (180 ml) of hot water, cover and leave for at least 10 minutes. The water should be hot but not violently boiling, because a rolling boil scorches the threads and takes the perfume with it. While it infuses, grate the Pecorino Sardo as finely as you can manage, on the smallest holes or a rasp, and put most of it in a wide bowl with a small amount set aside for serving. Fine grating matters more than it sounds: coarse shreds of sheep cheese melt unevenly and turn stringy instead of creamy. Keep the infusion warm and covered.

Step 2

Boil the malloreddus in moderately salted water. Bring the 5 qt (4.7 l) of water to a full boil and add only 2 tsp (12 g) of fine sea salt, which is less than you would normally use. Pecorino Sardo maturo is a very salty cheese and it will season the finished dish on its own, so the water has to be held back. Add the malloreddus, stir at once so the pieces do not clump, and cook them about 2 minutes short of the time on the packet. Before draining, lift out a mug of the cloudy cooking water and keep it. Drain, and never rinse.

Step 3

Finish the cooking in the pan with the saffron infusion. Tip the drained malloreddus straight into a wide sauté pan over medium heat and pour in about 1/2 cup (120 ml) of the saffron infusion together with the softened threads. Toss continuously for the last 2 minutes of cooking so the pasta drinks the golden liquid and gives up surface starch into it. Add more infusion a tablespoon at a time only when the pan looks dry. Stop while the pasta is still firm at the centre and a little glossy liquid moves around it, because everything tightens in the next step.

Step 4

Build the emulsion off the heat. Take the pan completely off the burner and wait about thirty seconds. Stir a spoonful of the warm saffron infusion into the grated pecorino in its bowl until you have a thick smooth paste, then add that paste to the pasta in three or four additions, tossing hard between each one. The residual heat, the saffron water, the surface starch and the cheese fat come together into a sauce that clings and shines. If it tightens, loosen it with the reserved cooking water a tablespoon at a time. Grind in the black pepper and add the olive oil at the very end.

Step 5

Taste and serve immediately. Eat one whole piece of pasta with its sauce before you touch the salt, since the cheese has already done most of the seasoning and there is no way back from an oversalted bowl. Spoon the malloreddus into warm shallow bowls and let them settle naturally rather than building them into a tower. The sauce should coat the ridges and shine there without pooling underneath. Finish with the reserved pecorino, a few whole saffron threads and a few drops of olive oil. Serve at once, because the emulsion sets as the cheese cools.

Plating

Warm the bowls before anything else, and warm them properly rather than symbolically. Shallow bowls held at around 140°F (60°C) keep a cheese emulsion fluid for the few minutes it takes to eat, while a cold bowl seizes it into a pale mass on the way to the table. A rinse under hot tap water and a wipe is enough if you have no plate warmer.

Use a spoon and a pair of tongs, not a ladle. Lift the malloreddus with tongs so the sauce stays on the pasta and comes with it, then draw the spoon around the inside of the pan and spoon the last of the sauce over the top. Keep the portion low and open in the bowl. Heaped pasta traps steam, and steam is what turns a bright saffron gloss into a dull film.

Finish in front of the diner if you can. A light dusting of the reserved pecorino, eight or ten whole saffron threads laid on top rather than stirred in, and a few drops of good olive oil. No parsley, no basil, no cream. The colour of the dish is the plating.

Professional Technique

The technique that defines this recipe is the off heat emulsion of sheep cheese, and the single number that governs it is temperature. Pecorino Sardo maturo begins to break above roughly 160°F (70°C): the casein network contracts, the butterfat is squeezed out and you get a rubbery thread of cheese sitting in an oily puddle. Adding grated pecorino to a pan that is still on a burner guarantees exactly that. Pulling the pan off the heat and waiting half a minute before the cheese goes in is not a matter of caution, it is the whole method.

The second piece is the saffron infusion itself, which does two jobs at once. It is the liquid phase of the emulsion, replacing the plain cooking water a Roman cook would use, and it is the aromatic backbone of the dish. Saffron gives up its colour and its perfume to water, not to fat, and it needs time rather than heat: ten minutes covered at around 175°F (80°C) extracts far more than two minutes in a boiling pan. The threads then go into the sauce with their water, because they are still carrying flavour.

The third is the paste. Mixing the grated cheese with a little warm infusion before it meets the pasta hydrates the proteins and lets the fat begin to disperse while nothing is hot enough to break it. Cheese added dry to a pan of wet pasta clumps around the first grain it touches and never recovers.

Texture and Moisture Control

Malloreddus are thick and dense compared with most dried pasta, so they hold a firm centre well and forgive a few seconds either side of the ideal. What they do not forgive is a dry pan. Pulling them two minutes early and finishing them in the saffron infusion lets that last stretch of cooking happen in a small amount of starchy liquid rather than in five quarts of water, and the starch that would have washed away stays in the pan where it is needed.

Starch is the stabiliser of this sauce, and the moderately salted cooking water is your reserve of it. Keep a mug of it and treat it as an ingredient rather than as a last resort. If the sauce turns tight and grainy, a tablespoon of that water and hard tossing will usually bring it back; if it is loose and watery, more grated cheese off the heat will tighten it. Plain water from the tap does neither, because it carries no starch and cannot bind.

Aim for a sauce that falls slowly from a spoon and coats the back of it, a little looser in the pan than you want it in the bowl. It thickens noticeably as the cheese cools on the way to the table, so serve it slightly under thickened and it arrives right.

Professional Mise en Place

Everything about this dish happens in the last four minutes, so nothing that can be done earlier should be left until then. The order below is how a service station is set up for it.

Equipment and tools

• Wide sauté pan, large enough to toss 14 oz (400 g) of pasta freely

• Fine rasp grater or the smallest holes of a box grater

• Large pot for the pasta, tongs and a heatproof mug for cooking water

• Instant read thermometer, useful the first few times you make it

Prepared ahead

• Saffron infused up to 2 hours ahead, covered and kept warm

• Pecorino Sardo grated on the day and kept at room temperature, never cold

• Black pepper ground fresh just before service

• Bowls warming, pasta water on a rolling boil and already salted

Service setup

• Cheese bowl, infusion and cooking water within arm's reach of the pan

• Burner off before the cheese paste goes anywhere near the pasta

• Reserved pecorino and whole saffron threads in small dishes for finishing

• Tongs and spoon ready, and the bowls out on the pass

Chef Tips

Buy threads, never powder. Powdered saffron is routinely cut with turmeric or safflower and it gives you colour with no perfume, which leaves the dish looking right and tasting of nothing but salty cheese. Good threads are deep red with orange tips, they are sold by the gram and they smell sweet and faintly medicinal in the jar.

Let the cheese come to room temperature. Pecorino taken straight from the refrigerator and grated cold drops the temperature of the pan at the worst possible moment and encourages clumping. Grate it early, leave it on the counter under a cloth, and it will melt into the starch far more willingly.

If the sauce splits, do not put it back on the heat. Take a clean bowl, put in a tablespoon of hot cooking water and a small handful of fresh grated pecorino, whisk them into a paste and then work the broken sauce into it a little at a time. You are rebuilding the emulsion around a new base, and it works more often than it has any right to.

If Pecorino Sardo maturo is not available, Fiore Sardo is the closest substitute and brings a light smoke with it. Pecorino Romano is saltier and sharper, so cut it with a third of mild pecorino and drop the salt in the pasta water further still. Parmigiano alone is not a substitute, since the point of the plate is sheep milk.

Common Mistakes

Adding the cheese while the pan is still on the burner. Above roughly 160°F (70°C) the pecorino breaks, the fat separates and you get stringy cheese in an oily pan. Take the pan off the heat, count to thirty and only then add the cheese paste.

Salting the pasta water as usual. Pecorino Sardo maturo is powerfully salty and it seasons the whole dish. Standard salting on top of it makes the bowl inedible, and no amount of cooking water will fix it. Use about half what you normally would.

Boiling the saffron. Threads dropped into a rolling pan scorch and turn bitter, and most of the aroma leaves with the steam. Infuse them covered in hot water off the heat for ten minutes and add the threads together with their liquid.

Grating the cheese too coarsely. Shreds from the large holes of a box grater melt into ropes rather than into a sauce, and once they have roped there is no recovering them. Use a rasp or the finest holes you own.

Draining without keeping any cooking water. That cloudy water is the only starch reserve you have and the only thing that will loosen a sauce that has gone tight. Take a mug of it before the colander every single time.

Wine Pairing

Vermentino di Gallura DOCG: The reference bottle for this plate. Grown on decomposed granite in the north of the island, it has a saline edge and a firm citrus acidity that cuts straight through the fat of aged sheep cheese instead of being smothered by it. Its faintly bitter almond finish runs alongside the honeyed bitterness of saffron rather than arguing with it.

Nuragus di Cagliari DOC: The wine of the Campidano, from the same plain that grows the saffron, and the most historically exact pairing here. It is lighter and more neutral than Vermentino, with high acidity, modest alcohol and green apple fruit, and that restraint is the point: it refreshes the palate between forkfuls of a salty, fatty sauce without adding a third aromatic voice.

Alghero DOC: The white bottlings from the Catalan corner of the island have a little more weight and a softer, more stone fruit profile, which suits anyone who finds a very lean white thin against this much pecorino. There is enough body to sit under the emulsion and enough acidity to stop it turning heavy across a full portion.

Cannonau di Sardegna DOC: The island red, for a table that wants one with a primo. Choose a young unoaked bottling and serve it cool, around 57°F (14°C). At that temperature its soft tannin and dried herb character meet the black pepper and the sheep cheese without the tannin scraping against the salt, which is exactly what a warm, heavily oaked bottle would do.

Storage & Reheating

This is a dish to eat as it leaves the pan, and it stores badly by design, because a starch and cheese emulsion is a temporary thing. If you have leftovers, cool them quickly, put them in an airtight container and refrigerate for no more than 2 days. Do not freeze the finished dish: the emulsion separates on thawing and the pasta turns to paste.

To reheat, put the cold malloreddus in a nonstick pan with 2 tbsp (30 ml) of water or leftover saffron infusion, cover and warm over the lowest possible heat, shaking the pan rather than stirring. The steam loosens the sauce and rebuilds the coating. Stop as soon as it is hot to the touch. A microwave overheats the cheese in seconds and gives you the same broken oily result as a hot burner, and a hot pan without liquid does the same thing faster.

The components keep far better than the finished plate. Saffron infusion holds in a sealed jar in the refrigerator for 3 days and goes straight into the next batch. Dried malloreddus keep for years in a cupboard, so cook only what you will eat.

Nutrition

Per serving, based on 4 servings:

• Calories: 610 kcal

• Total Fat: 20 g

• Saturated Fat: 10 g

• Trans Fat: 0 g

• Unsaturated Fat: 9 g

• Cholesterol: 45 mg

• Sodium: 890 mg

• Total Carbohydrates: 79 g

• Fiber: 4 g

• Total Sugars: 3 g

• Added Sugars: 0 g

• Protein: 25 g

• Lactose: 0.4 g

• Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, selenium, vitamin B2, vitamin B12, zinc

These figures are estimates. Sodium moves most of all, since it depends on how mature the pecorino is and how heavily the water was salted. Aged sheep cheese loses lactose as it matures, which is why that figure is low.

Chef Gianluca