Italian Penne with Broccoli Rabe Cream, Anchovies and Crispy Tarallo | Penne con Crema di Cime di Rapa, Acciughe e Tarallo Croccante
Broccoli rabe is a bitter green that most of Italy treats with suspicion and Puglia treats as a birthright. From Bari across the Murge it is eaten all winter with nothing but garlic, chilli, olive oil and salted anchovy, and the bitterness is celebrated rather than softened. This plate rearranges the same flavours, so the bitterness arrives as a smooth green sauce instead of chopped leaves and the crunch returns as crushed tarallo.
The pasta is penne rigate, a factory format of dried durum semola, and the choice is deliberate. A purée based condiment has nothing structural to cling to, so it needs a shape offering two places to sit: the hollow tube and the grooves outside. A flat or smooth format lets this sauce slide off.
The discipline sits in three places: blanch the greens hard enough to set the colour and briefly enough to keep it, melt the anchovy rather than fry it, and hold the tarallo crumb bone dry until the last second.
Yield: 4 servings as a first course. Prep: 25 minutes. Cook: 25 minutes. Total: about 50 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Puglia, the Terra di Bari and the Murge plateau.
The Story
Cima di rapa is a winter crop of the limestone country behind Bari, sown in autumn on land that has already given a summer harvest and cut leaf by leaf through the cold months. Botanically it is a turnip bred for its flowering tops rather than its root, which is why the Italian name speaks of the tops of the rapa and why the English name misleads almost everyone. The bitterness comes from glucosinolates in the buds and peaks in the coldest weeks, exactly when Puglia wants it.
The salted anchovy arrived from a different trade. Barrels of anchovies cured in salt travelled inland from the Adriatic ports, and in a region with no refrigeration and very little meat they became the cheapest way to put savoury depth into a pot of vegetables. Melted into warm oil the fillet disappears entirely, leaving no fishy flavour and a great deal of the weight a kitchen without stock or butter cannot otherwise build.
The tarallo is the third leg: a small ring of hard dough made with flour, white wine and olive oil, boiled briefly and baked until it snaps, sold by weight in every bakery from Foggia to Lecce. Where bread was too precious to crumble, broken taralli were the crumb of choice. Turning the greens into a cream is the one modern move, and it belongs to the generation of Puglian cooks who came home from the north and served their grandmothers' vegetables in a new shape. The flavours are unchanged; only the distribution is.
Ingredients
For the pasta
Penne rigate, bronze die, 12 oz (340 g)
Coarse sea salt for the water, 2 tbsp (30 g)
Water, 5 quarts (4.7 l)
For the broccoli rabe cream
Broccoli rabe, cleaned weight after trimming, 1 lb 2 oz (500 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, Puglian, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Garlic cloves, peeled and left whole, 2
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Ice water for chilling, about 6 cups (1.4 l)
For the anchovy base
Salted anchovy fillets, rinsed and boned, 6
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Garlic clove, thinly sliced, 1
Dried peperoncino, crumbled, 1/2 tsp (1 g)
For the tarallo crumb
Plain taralli, fennel free, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
For finishing
Pecorino Pugliese or aged Pecorino, finely grated, 1 1/2 oz (40 g)
Reserved pasta cooking water, about 1 cup (240 ml)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Cleaning and sorting the broccoli rabe
Work through the bunch stalk by stalk. Snap off the lower stems where they resist the thumbnail, keep every bud and tender leaf, and peel any stalk thicker than a pencil. Keep the buds separate, since they cook faster and go in a minute later. Wash in two changes of cold water and drain.
Blanching the greens and setting the colour
Bring a wide pot of water to a rolling boil and salt it generously. Drop in the stalks and leaves, count 90 seconds, then add the buds for another 90. Lift everything straight into ice water and leave it only until cold. This step decides whether the sauce is emerald or khaki: chlorophyll holds its colour briefly and then collapses, and nothing recovers it.
Blending the cream
Squeeze the chilled greens firmly by the handful but stop while they are still damp, reserving about 3/4 cup of the green blanching water. Blend them with the garlic, oil, salt and 1/4 cup of that water at full speed for a minute, loosening a tablespoon at a time until the purée moves like thick pouring cream.
Melting the anchovies
Warm the olive oil, sliced garlic and peperoncino in a wide saute pan over low heat until the garlic is fragrant and pale gold, never brown. Add the anchovies and press them against the base with a wooden spoon until they vanish into the oil, about two minutes. Anchovy driven hard turns sharp and fishy, and nobody at the table should be able to name the ingredient.
Toasting the tarallo crumb
Crush the taralli in a bag with a rolling pin to a coarse rubble the size of lentils, not a powder. Warm the teaspoon of oil in a small pan and toast the crumb over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, shaking constantly, until it smells nutty. Tip it onto a cold plate, stir through the lemon zest and leave it uncovered. Taralli are twice cooked already and burn from golden to bitter in under a minute.
Cooking the penne
Bring the 5 quarts of water to a boil and add the coarse salt. Salt it properly and under season everything else, because anchovy and Pecorino are both salty and the pasta is the only thing you can season from the inside. Cook the penne 2 minutes short of the box time, tasting rather than trusting it: you want a chalky core at the drain. Reserve a full cup of cooking water.
Combining and mantecatura
Raise the anchovy pan to medium, pour in the broccoli rabe cream and warm it for 30 seconds without boiling. Add the drained penne and a ladle of pasta water and toss continuously so the starch works instead of sticking. Two minutes, adding water in small amounts, until the sauce clings to the ridges and slides into the tubes. Off the heat, rain in the Pecorino while tossing for a final 20 seconds: aged sheep cheese strings the moment it meets a simmering pan.
Judging the finish
Taste one whole piece of penne with its sauce, never the sauce alone. The pasta should offer light resistance at the centre, the sauce should coat a spoon in a thin even film, and the bitterness should arrive after the salt. A tight pan opens with a tablespoon of water; a loose one closes with ten seconds over low heat. Correct with pepper and oil, almost never with more salt.
Plating
Use wide shallow bowls and warm them only to about the temperature of a hand. A bowl from a hot cupboard carries on cooking the pasta and tightens the sauce into a paste before the second forkful. Lift the penne into a low mound in the centre rather than spreading it flat, so it holds its heat.
Spoon the sauce left in the pan over the mound rather than around it. This is a coated pasta, not a pasta in a pool, and a ring of green sauce on the rim separates and looks oily. Scatter the tarallo crumb at the pass, since it softens on contact with warm sauce.
Finish with a thread of raw olive oil and a grind of black pepper, and stop there. The temptation to perch a whole broccoli rabe bud on top is worth resisting, since it tastes far more bitter than the cream. For visible green texture, chop two blanched buds finely and fold them in during the last toss.
Professional Technique
The controlling technique is the blanch and shock. Heat drives trapped air out of the leaf tissue, which is why the green looks suddenly brighter in the first seconds of boiling, and it deactivates the enzymes that degrade chlorophyll. Past roughly three minutes, though, acids from the broken cells strip the magnesium out of the chlorophyll molecule and replace it with hydrogen, turning the pigment olive grey. Three minutes sits just inside that window, and the ice bath stops the clock.
The second technique is using the green blanching water rather than plain water to loosen the purée. It has taken on a measurable amount of the vegetable's flavour and a little of its colour, so it keeps the cream concentrated where fresh water would dilute it. Salt it at blanching time as you would pasta water and it becomes a seasoned liquid you can add freely.
The third is the emulsion. Olive oil alone will not bind to starch water in any stable way, and a purée of vegetable and oil left on heat separates into a green solid and a slick. What holds this sauce is the starch released by the penne in its last two minutes, agitated hard in a wide pan, with the Pecorino added off the heat as the final thickener. Starch first, cheese last, heat off before the cheese.
Texture and Moisture Control
Four textures arrive together and each fails differently. The pasta stays firm at the core, which means draining early and letting the pan finish it. The cream must be pourable rather than spoonable, since a purée that is too thick sits outside the penne and never enters the tube. The crumb must be brittle and the cheese dissolved rather than visible.
Moisture moves fastest here, because dried pasta keeps absorbing liquid for a couple of minutes after it leaves the pan. Finish slightly looser than you want it on the plate, by about a tablespoon of water per portion: if it looks perfect in the pan it will look heavy at the table. Never correct a tight sauce with more oil, which makes it richer without making it wetter.
Temperature is the other control. The anchovy base wants low heat, the mantecatura medium, the cheese none. Broccoli rabe cream held near a simmer for more than a minute turns dull and smells of cabbage, because the sulphur compounds that give the green its character become aggressive with prolonged heat.
Professional Mise en Place
Almost everything here is done in advance and the service window is under five minutes. Organise the station so the only live cooking at the end is the pasta and the toss.
Equipment and tools
Wide pot for blanching and a tall pot for the pasta
Bowl of ice water deep enough to submerge the greens
Blender, or a tall jug with an immersion blender
Wide saute pan, 12 inches (30 cm), deep enough to toss
Tongs, a ladle for pasta water, a microplane for the Pecorino
Prepared ahead
Broccoli rabe cleaned, blanched, shocked and blended, up to 1 day ahead
Blanching water reserved in a jar beside the cream
Anchovies rinsed, boned and patted dry, up to 2 days ahead
Taralli crushed but not yet toasted, in a sealed jar
Pecorino grated on the day, never the night before
Service setup
Pasta water boiling and correctly salted before the anchovy base goes on
Anchovy base built and held off the heat, ready to return
Broccoli rabe cream at room temperature beside the stove
Tarallo crumb toasted last, on a cold plate, away from steam
Bowls barely warm, oil and pepper mill within reach
Chef Tips
Buy salted anchovies from the barrel rather than fillets in oil, and rinse them under cold running water before boning. The salt cured fillet has a cleaner savoury depth and far less of the oxidised note jarred fillets pick up.
Choose your taralli carefully. Many are heavily flavoured with fennel seed, and fennel fights broccoli rabe rather than supporting it. Look for the plain version made with white wine and olive oil only. Failing that, a dry sourdough crust torn coarsely and toasted in oil does the same job.
If the bitterness of your bunch is fierce, and in midwinter it will be, add a little reserved blanching water and a pinch more Pecorino rather than sugar or cream. Salt and fat both suppress the perception of bitterness, while sugar just adds a second flavour.
Make the cream the day before if you are cooking for more than four. Shocked properly it loses very little colour overnight, and having it ready turns a fifteen minute service into a five minute one.
Common Mistakes
Boiling the greens until they are soft. Beyond about three minutes the chlorophyll degrades and the purée turns the colour of pea soup, and nothing brings the green back. Time the blanch and have the ice water ready before the greens go in.
Skipping the ice bath. Greens left to cool in a colander keep cooking from their own retained heat for several minutes, long enough to undo a correctly timed blanch. The bath is not a refinement, it is the second half of the technique.
Frying the anchovies instead of melting them. High heat makes the fillets curl, brown and turn sharply fishy rather than dissolving. Low heat and the back of a spoon for two minutes is the whole method, and it should end with nothing recognisable in the pan.
Adding the Pecorino over the flame. Aged sheep cheese seizes and strings the moment it meets a simmering pan, leaving lumps and a greasy film. Take the pan off the heat, wait a few seconds, then add the cheese while tossing.
Dressing with the crumb too early. Tarallo softens on contact with warm sauce within a minute, and once soft the dish has lost the contrast it was built around. Toast it in advance and scatter it as the bowls leave the pass.
Wine Pairing
Martina Franca DOC: The local answer, from the Valle d'Itria barely an hour from where these greens grow. Built on Verdeca with Bianco d'Alessano, it is dry, lean and finishes on a bitter almond note that runs parallel to the broccoli rabe instead of fighting it, and its modest alcohol keeps the peperoncino in check.
Offida Pecorino DOCG: A Marche white with unusual density for its acidity, which is what a dish carrying both salt and bitterness needs. Its herbal aromatics meet the garlic and chilli directly, while the firm acid line cuts the olive oil and resets the palate between forkfuls. It also has the weight to stand up to the Pecorino.
Greco di Tufo DOCG: Grown on sulphur rich volcanic soils inland from Naples, this is the most savoury white here and the best match for the melted anchovy. Its smoky, faintly saline character amplifies the buried salt of the fillets rather than contrasting with it, and its stone fruit weight gives the cream something to lean against.
Cirò Bianco DOC: Pure Greco Bianco from the Ionian coast of Calabria and the leanest choice here. High in acid, low in aromatic noise and finishing dry and slightly bitter, it refreshes rather than partners. Pour it when you want the plate to do the talking, and serve it cold, around 48°F (9°C).
Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo DOC: A serious dry rosato from Montepulciano grapes, deeply coloured and far more structured than its pink appearance suggests. Its red fruit aroma reads as sweetness without any sugar, which softens the bitterness of the greens, and it keeps enough grip for the chilli and the cheese.
Storage & Reheating
Stored separately the components behave well. The broccoli rabe cream keeps in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2 days with very little loss of colour, and freezes for up to 2 months in a flat sealed bag, which is the most useful thing you can do with a glut of winter rabe. Thaw it overnight and blend it for ten seconds to bring it back together. The anchovy base keeps 3 days under a film of oil, the tarallo crumb a week in a sealed jar.
Dressed pasta should be eaten at once. If there are leftovers, cool them within an hour, refrigerate them in a shallow airtight container and eat them within 24 hours. Never freeze the finished dish: the penne turns mealy and the emulsion separates irreversibly.
To reheat, use a wide pan over low heat with 2 tablespoons of water per portion and stir gently until the sauce loosens, usually 2 to 3 minutes. The microwave heats unevenly and boils the sauce in spots. Add a fresh scatter of crumb at the end.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 first course portions:
Calories: 570 kcal
Total Fat: 25 g
Saturated Fat: 6 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 18 g
Cholesterol: 22 mg
Sodium: 890 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 68 g
Fiber: 6 g
Total Sugars: 4 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 20 g
Lactose: 0.3 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin K, vitamin C, folate, calcium, iron, selenium
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the blanching and pasta water is discarded rather than eaten, and the final sodium depends on how thoroughly the anchovies were rinsed and how much Pecorino goes in.
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