Paccheri with Fava Beans, Red Prawns, Lemon Zest and Stracciatella | Paccheri con Favette, Gamberi Rossi, Scorza di Limone e Stracciatella
This is a plate of the Italian south assembled from four regions that rarely meet on the same fork. The paccheri come from Gragnano, the fava beans from the spring fields of Puglia, the red prawns from the deep water off Sicily, the stracciatella from a dairy in Andria. None of them is a luxury in its own territory, yet together they produce a dish that tastes expensive.
The timing is everything. Red prawns are barely cooked at all: they are peeled raw, the heads become a quick concentrated stock, and the tails go into the pan off the heat so the warmth of the pasta sets them and nothing more. The fava beans are split, half blended into a loose green cream and half left whole. The stracciatella never sees a flame.
What holds it together is the emulsion. There is no cream and no butter here. The body comes from starch released by the paccheri, the fat from olive oil and prawn heads, and the two are forced into a glossy suspension in the last minute of the recipe. Get that minute right and the sauce clings inside every tube.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 35 minutes. Cook: 25 minutes. Total: about 1 hour. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Campania, Puglia and the Sicilian channel.
The Story
Paccheri are a Gragnano shape, extruded through bronze dies and dried slowly on the hill above Castellammare di Stabia, where sea air and the wind off the Lattari mountains have dried pasta since the sixteenth century. The name comes from the Neapolitan paccaria, a slap, for the noise a wet tube makes landing on the plate. Local lore says the shape once smuggled cheap Italian garlic across the Alps, hidden inside the tubes.
The fava bean is the oldest thing here. Cultivated across the Mediterranean before the Romans, it fed the poor of the south for two thousand years and still marks the calendar there. Favette are the young pods picked in April and May, sweet rather than starchy, small enough to eat raw with pecorino, and gone by June. The dried bean that becomes fave e cicoria in Puglia is the same plant six weeks later and a different ingredient entirely.
The prawn and the cheese are modern. Gambero rosso, the deep water red prawn of Mazara del Vallo and Gallipoli, was long a by catch the fishermen ate themselves, because its flesh softens fast and it travels badly. Only freezing on board brought it to the mainland. Stracciatella is younger still, the torn interior of burrata, invented in Andria around 1920 to use up mozzarella scraps.
Ingredients
For the pasta
Paccheri di Gragnano, bronze die, 12 oz (340 g)
Coarse sea salt for the pasta water, 2 tbsp (30 g)
Water, 5 quarts (4.75 litres)
For the prawns and their stock
Whole red prawns, gamberi rossi, 1 lb 5 oz (600 g) with heads and shells
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Garlic clove, lightly crushed, 1
Dry white wine, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Water, 1 1/4 cups (300 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
For the fava beans
Fresh fava beans in the pod, 2 lb 4 oz (1 kg), about 10 oz (285 g) shelled
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Spring onion, white part only, finely sliced, 1
Light vegetable stock or water, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
For finishing
Stracciatella di burrata, 5 oz (140 g), at cool room temperature
Unwaxed lemon, zest only, 1
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Wild fennel fronds or dill, a few sprigs
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Step 1
Clean the prawns and keep every part. Twist the head from each prawn rather than pulling, so the tomalley stays inside. Peel the tails, run a knife tip down the back and lift out the dark tract. Cover the tails and refrigerate at once, because red prawn flesh softens within an hour at room temperature. Keep the heads and shells apart: they carry most of the flavour here and nothing replaces them.
Step 2
Make the prawn stock. Warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add the crushed garlic and the heads and shells, and press the heads hard with a wooden spoon so the orange tomalley runs into the oil. Cook 3 minutes until the shells turn scarlet. Add the wine, let it evaporate, pour in the water and salt, and simmer gently 12 minutes. Strain, pressing hard, and reserve about 1 cup (240 ml).
Step 3
Shell and blanch the fava beans. Split the pods and pop out the beans. Drop them into boiling unsalted water for 60 seconds, then straight into iced water. Unless the favette are very young, slip off the pale outer skin with a thumbnail. It is tedious and not optional: that skin is bitter and decides whether the cream comes out bright green or dull grey. Keep a third of the beans whole.
Step 4
Build the fava cream. Warm 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a small pan over low heat and sweat the spring onion 4 minutes without letting it colour. Add the larger share of peeled beans, the stock, the salt and a little white pepper, and simmer 3 minutes only. Blend completely smooth, loosening with warm stock to the texture of a loose pouring cream. Keep it warm but never boil it again, or the colour turns olive.
Step 5
Salt the water properly and cook the paccheri. Bring 5 quarts of water to a rolling boil and add 2 tablespoons of coarse salt, roughly 1 percent salinity. That level is deliberate: the pasta finishes in a sauce of prawn stock and cheese, both carrying salt of their own. Slide in the paccheri, stir once so they do not nest, and cook 2 minutes less than the shortest time on the packet.
Step 6
Reserve the starch water. A minute before draining, ladle out at least 1 1/2 cups (360 ml) of cooking water and keep it by the stove. In a dish with no cream and no butter, that cloudy liquid is the only emulsifier you have. Lift the paccheri with a spider instead of tipping them into a colander, because the tubes trap water and the pot must stay available to the last second.
Step 7
Bring the sauce together. Set a wide sauté pan over medium heat with the fava cream and about 3/4 cup (180 ml) of prawn stock. Add the drained paccheri and the whole beans, then start the mantecatura: keep the pan moving, add starchy water a ladle at a time, and let the tubes finish their last 2 minutes in the sauce rather than the water. Stream in the last olive oil while the pan moves.
Step 8
Add the prawns off the heat. When the sauce coats the paccheri and the pan looks glossy rather than wet, take it off the burner. Scatter in the raw tails, keeping four of the best back for the top, and fold them through for no more than 30 seconds. Retained heat turns them opaque at the edges while the centre stays translucent and sweet. A prawn of this quality cooked through has been wasted.
Plating
Warm the plates, but only to about 120°F (50°C). This dish carries raw prawn and fresh cheese, and a plate straight from a hot cupboard keeps cooking both while the diner is still sitting down. Wide shallow bowls beat flat plates, because the sauce is loose and should pool rather than run to the rim.
Lift the paccheri into the centre of each bowl with tongs, standing a few tubes on end so the openings show. That shape is the reason for choosing paccheri, and burying it under a flat heap wastes it. Spoon the remaining sauce over and around, then lay one reserved prawn tail across each portion.
Tear the stracciatella into three or four loose pieces per bowl and set them on the hot pasta at the last moment, so the strands slacken as the plate reaches the table rather than before. Grate the lemon zest over from a height, taking only the yellow, then finish with raw olive oil, black pepper and two fronds of wild fennel. Let people stir it themselves.
Professional Technique
The defining technique is pulling a concentrated stock out of prawn heads in under fifteen minutes and using it as the liquid phase of an emulsion. Crustacean heads hold tomalley, an orange paste rich in flavour compounds and in natural emulsifying lecithins. Pressing the heads into hot oil before any liquid goes in puts that paste in contact with fat first, which gives the sauce its colour and much of its ability to hold.
The second technique is a mantecatura built on starch alone. Dried semola pasta finishing in a pan keeps shedding amylose into the surrounding liquid, and that dissolved starch is a real stabiliser: it sits at the interface between oil and water and stops them separating. Three things make it work. The sauce must be loose when the pasta goes in. The pan must keep moving. And the olive oil goes in last, once enough starch is present to catch it.
The third is thermal restraint. Red prawn protein begins to firm around 120°F (50°C) and turns cottony above 140°F (60°C), while stracciatella splits into curd and whey much over 105°F (40°C). Both are added once the heat source is gone, relying on the falling temperature of the pasta. Finishing them rather than cooking them is what separates this from a pasta with seafood and cheese stirred through.
Texture and Moisture Control
The pasta comes first. Paccheri are thick walled and they mislead you, because the outside softens several minutes before the seam at the join does. Undercook them by a full 2 minutes and let the pan finish them, tasting the join rather than the wall. Al dente in a tube this size means a pale core still visible when you tear one open.
The sauce fails in two directions and starch water corrects both. Oily and separated means the pan is too hot or there is not enough dissolved starch, so lower the heat and add cooking water while shaking hard. Pasty and dull means too much starch, so add prawn stock rather than water and avoid diluting flavour. The correct state coats the back of a spoon in a thin film.
Moisture inside the tubes matters as much as the sauce outside them. Paccheri trap water in their hollow centres, which is why they are lifted with a spider and go straight into the pan. Any liquid still inside at plating runs out and thins the sauce in front of the diner. Keeping the pan moving pushes sauce through the tubes and plain water out.
Professional Mise en Place
Nearly all the labour here is shelling and peeling, and all of it can be done hours ahead. Once the pot is on, the dish finishes in ten minutes with no point at which you can stop and catch up.
Equipment and tools
Tall pasta pot and a spider skimmer, never a colander
Wide low sided sauté pan, large enough to hold all the pasta in one layer
Small saucepan and a fine mesh sieve for the prawn stock
Blender for the fava cream, and a microplane for the lemon
Ladle kept in the pasta water throughout service
Prepared ahead
Prawn stock, strained, up to 1 day ahead, refrigerated
Fava beans blanched and peeled, up to 6 hours ahead, kept covered and cold
Fava cream blended, up to 4 hours ahead, gently rewarmed without boiling
Prawn tails peeled and deveined, on the day only, kept on ice
Lemon zested at the last moment, never in advance
Service setup
Fava cream warm in a small pan at the side of the stove
Prawn stock warm and within reach of the sauté pan
Stracciatella out of the refrigerator 20 minutes before service
Plates warmed gently, never hot
Olive oil, pepper mill and fennel fronds lined up for the finish
Chef Tips
Buy the prawns whole, with the heads on, even if it means buying more than you need. A headless red prawn has already lost the part that makes this sauce. If fresh ones are unavailable, take them frozen at sea rather than thawed on a counter for a day.
Taste the fava beans raw before deciding what to do with them. Sweet and tender, and you can skip blanching the whole ones. Starchy or faintly bitter means they are older than they look, and the whole batch belongs in the cream.
Keep the prawn stock slightly under seasoned. It reduces further in the pan, the pasta water adds salt and the stracciatella brings more. Almost every failure of balance here comes from seasoning each component correctly alone and then finding the plate too salty.
If you can find burrata but not stracciatella, cut it open over a sieve set in a bowl, lift out the interior with a spoon and drain it 10 minutes. Keep the mozzarella shell for something else and the draining liquid out of the pan.
Common Mistakes
Cooking the prawns in the pan. They go in off the heat and are folded through for 30 seconds, no more. Properly sautéed they turn chalky and lose the sweetness that justifies their price, and no later step recovers it.
Throwing away the heads. The heads carry the tomalley that gives the sauce its colour, its depth and part of its emulsifying power. A version built on peeled prawns and water tastes thin and looks pale.
Leaving the skins on the fava beans. The outer skin is bitter and fibrous and will not break down in a blender. It turns a bright green cream grey and rough, and it is the usual reason home versions look dull.
Adding the stracciatella to the hot pan. It splits into rubbery curd and watery whey almost at once. It belongs on the plated pasta at the last second, where falling heat softens it without breaking it.
Draining the pasta in a colander. That throws away the starch water you need and leaves the tubes full of plain water that later runs onto the plate. Lift them with a spider and keep the pot.
Over salting the pasta water. The prawn stock, the cheese and the reduction in the pan all bring salt. About 1 percent salinity is right here, well below the standard for pasta dressed with tomato.
Wine Pairing
Fiano di Avellino DOCG: The most complete answer on the list, from the volcanic hills inland of Naples. Fiano has the weight and waxy texture to stand up to stracciatella and an olive oil emulsion, which lighter whites vanish under, and its hazelnut and honeyed pear character echoes the sweetness of the raw prawn.
Greco di Tufo DOCG: Choose this when the lemon zest is generous and the plate leans green. Greco is the most tightly wound of the Campanian whites, with a sulphurous volcanic note and a stony grip on the finish that suits shellfish. It also has the structure to handle the fava bean, whose vegetal edge makes softer whites taste flat.
Falanghina del Sannio DOC: The everyday bottle of the Campanian hinterland and the easiest match of the five. Brisk green apple acidity slices through the olive oil, while a faint bitter almond finish runs alongside the fava beans rather than fighting them. Enough body to meet the cheese, not enough to compete with the prawn.
Etna Bianco DOC: A Sicilian answer for a Sicilian prawn, built on Carricante grown on volcanic ash at altitude. Its searing acidity and saline finish counterweight the richness of the stracciatella, and the smoky mineral character picks up the toasted note the prawn heads leave in the stock. Give it a year in bottle.
Locorotondo DOC: The Puglian choice, right if you want the wine to follow the cheese rather than the seafood. Verdeca and Bianco d Alessano make a pale white with white flower aromatics and modest alcohol, grown a short drive from the dairies that produce stracciatella. It refreshes without adding a fifth flavour to the plate.
Storage & Reheating
The assembled dish does not keep and should never be built ahead. Raw prawn folded into hot pasta and then refrigerated is not something to treat casually, and stracciatella chilled again after warming turns grainy.
The components are another matter. Prawn stock keeps refrigerated in a sealed container for 2 days and frozen for 2 months, and an ice cube tray is the best use for spare heads. Fava cream keeps 2 days refrigerated and 1 month frozen. Peeled raw tails keep on ice in the coldest part of the refrigerator for 24 hours only.
To reheat leftover pasta without destroying it, put it in a nonstick pan over low heat with 2 tablespoons of water or prawn stock, cover, and warm it 2 to 3 minutes while shaking, stopping the moment it is hot to the touch. Never use a microwave, which overcooks the prawn in seconds. Add fresh stracciatella and new lemon zest at the end.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 680 kcal
Total Fat: 26 g
Saturated Fat: 7 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 18 g
Cholesterol: 165 mg
Sodium: 720 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 74 g
Fiber: 8 g
Total Sugars: 5 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 38 g
Lactose: 2.2 g
Principal micronutrients: iodine, selenium, zinc, folate, vitamin B12, phosphorus, calcium, vitamin C
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the pasta water is discarded rather than eaten, and the sodium depends on how much prawn stock ends up in the pan.
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