Traditional Italian Abruzzese Guitar Cut Pasta with Tiny Meatballs | Spaghetti alla Chitarra con Pallottine
Spaghetti alla chitarra con pallottine is the festive first course of Teramo, and the whole dish turns on the size of the meatballs. Pallottine are rolled no larger than a hazelnut, which means every forkful of pasta carries two or three of them. They are not small meatballs in the ordinary sense, they are a component of the sauce, and a version made with anything bigger stops being this dish.
The sauce underneath is deliberately simple: onion, tomato passed through a food mill, salt, basil. It is a light ragu rather than a long braise, because the meat flavour is meant to arrive from the pallottine themselves and not from hours of reduction. The meatballs are fried first, briefly and in deep oil, then finished in the sauce for the last fifteen minutes.
The pasta is the square cut chitarra of Abruzzo, rolled thick and cut on the wires so the strands come out with four flat faces. Nothing here is complicated. What it asks for is patience at the rolling board, where the meatballs are made one at a time between two palms.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 1 hour 15 minutes. Rest: 45 minutes. Cook: 50 minutes. Total: about 2 hours 50 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Abruzzo, province of Teramo.
The Story
This is a Teramano dish before it is an Abruzzese one, and in Teramo it belongs to weddings. Pallottine were the first course at the wedding lunch, and rolling them was collective work: the women of both families sat around a table the day before and turned out several hundred between them, while the children were given the job of keeping the tray flat and the rows even. The number tells you the point of the recipe. Meat was scarce and expensive, and making it very small was how you put it in every mouthful.
Teramo cooks differently from the rest of the region. It is the province of the Virtu, the enormous May Day soup of seven vegetables and seven legumes, of mazzarelle, of the timballo built with scrippelle, thin crepes, in place of pasta sheets. Its kitchen is richer and more bourgeois than the mountain cooking of L'Aquila and it looks north toward the Marche as much as inland. The pallottine fit that pattern exactly: a small piece of luxury, portioned so it stretches.
One boundary is worth stating. This is not the large meatball on spaghetti that emigration turned into an Italian American standard. In Teramo the meatball is a fraction of that size, it is never a second course sitting on top of the pasta, and it is cooked into the sauce rather than served beside it.
Ingredients
For the chitarra pasta
Durum wheat semola rimacinata, 1 2/3 cups (250 g)
Soft wheat flour type 00, 1 1/4 cups (150 g)
Whole eggs, large, 4
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Semola for dusting, about 1/4 cup (40 g)
For the pallottine
Ground veal, 7 oz (200 g)
Ground pork, 5 oz (150 g)
Stale white bread crumb, no crust, 1 oz (30 g)
Whole milk, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Egg, large, 1
Pecorino Abruzzese, finely grated, 1/3 cup (35 g)
Flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, 1 tbsp (4 g)
Garlic clove, grated, 1 small
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1 pinch
Fine sea salt, 3/4 tsp (5 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Light olive oil for frying, 1 cup (240 ml)
For the tomato sauce
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Yellow onion, finely diced, 1 small
Garlic clove, crushed, 1
Canned San Marzano tomatoes, passed through a food mill, 3 cups (720 g)
Water or light stock, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Fresh basil, 4 leaves
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
For cooking and finishing
Water for the pasta, 5 quarts (4.7 l)
Coarse sea salt for the water, 2 tbsp (36 g)
Pecorino Abruzzese, finely grated, 1/2 cup (50 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Preparation
Mixing and resting the dough
Mound the semola and the type 00 on a board, make a well and break in the eggs with the salt. Draw the flour in with a fork until the mass holds, then knead for 10 minutes until the surface is smooth and the dough feels firm rather than soft. A chitarra dough carries more semola than a northern egg pasta and it needs that firmness to cut cleanly on the wires. Rest it wrapped for 45 minutes.
Cutting the spaghetti on the chitarra
Divide the dough into four and roll each piece to about 2 mm, thick enough to match the spacing of the wires. Trim the sheet to the frame, dust it with semola, lay it on and drive a rolling pin across it in two or three firm passes until the strands fall through. Tap the side of the box, gather the spaghetti, toss them in semola and set them in loose nests on a dusted tray.
Soaking the bread and mixing the meat
Tear the bread crumb into a small bowl, pour over the milk and leave it for 10 minutes, then squeeze it lightly and break it up with a fork. Put the veal and pork in a cold bowl with the soaked bread, the egg, the pecorino, parsley, grated garlic, nutmeg, salt and pepper, and mix with your fingertips only until it comes together. Overworking the mixture makes the pallottine dense and rubbery once they are fried.
Rolling the pallottine
Wet your palms with cold water and roll the mixture into balls the size of a hazelnut, about 1/2 inch across, weighing 5 to 6 grams each. You should get between 60 and 80 from this quantity. Keep them even, because a tray of mixed sizes cooks unevenly and the large ones stay raw in the centre while the small ones dry out. Lay them in a single layer on a tray and refrigerate them for 20 minutes so they firm up before frying.
Frying the pallottine
Heat the light olive oil in a small deep pan to 340°F (170°C). Fry the pallottine in batches of about twenty, moving them with a slotted spoon, for 60 to 90 seconds, just until they are golden and sealed. They are not being cooked through here. Lift them onto absorbent paper. Frying sets the surface so they keep their shape in the sauce, and the browning supplies a depth of flavour the sauce itself never has time to build.
The tomato sauce
Warm the extra virgin olive oil in a wide pan, add the onion with a pinch of salt and cook it gently for 8 minutes until translucent but not coloured. Add the crushed garlic for a minute, then the milled tomatoes, the water and the salt. Bring to a simmer and cook uncovered for 20 minutes, stirring now and then, until the sauce has lost its raw edge and coats a spoon lightly. Fish out the garlic clove.
Finishing the pallottine in the sauce
Slide the fried pallottine into the simmering sauce with the basil leaves and cook them together for 15 minutes on low heat, shaking the pan rather than stirring so they stay whole. This is where they finish cooking and where the sauce gains the meat flavour that defines the dish. Taste for salt at the very end, since the pecorino in the meatballs and the pecorino at the table both bring their own.
Cooking the pasta and the mantecatura
Bring the water to a rolling boil, add the coarse salt and drop in the nests. Fresh chitarra needs 2 to 3 minutes, so start testing at 90 seconds and pull the strands while the edges are still firm. Lift them into the pan with tongs, add a ladle of pasta water and toss over medium heat for about a minute so the sauce tightens onto the pasta. Finish off the heat with the olive oil and half the pecorino.
Plating
Serve this in a warm shallow bowl, around 130°F (55°C), which is enough to hold the temperature without drying the sauce. The pallottine are the visual point of the dish, so they must be seen. Reserve a spoonful of them out of the pan before you dress the pasta.
Turn the dressed spaghetti into the centre with tongs, keeping the nest loose so the strands do not compact, then spoon the reserved pallottine over and around it. Let a little sauce fall on the base of the bowl. Finish with grated pecorino and one small basil leaf if you have a good one, and nothing else. This is a domestic dish that looks best when it looks unarranged.
Professional Technique
The technique that decides this recipe is the panade, the soaked bread and milk that goes into the meat. Starch from the bread and protein from the milk trap water in the mixture and hold it there through frying and simmering, so a hazelnut sized ball with a very high ratio of surface to interior does not dry into a pellet. Squeeze the bread only lightly, because the milk it still holds is doing the work.
The second is the two stage cooking, fry then simmer, which cooks are tempted to shorten by dropping raw meatballs straight into the sauce. Raw meat poached in tomato gives up its proteins into the liquid, clouds the sauce and leaves pale soft balls that break when the pan is shaken. A brief fry at 340°F (170°C) coagulates the outer layer, seals the shape and adds browned flavour, and fifteen minutes in the sauce then cooks the centres.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three textures have to arrive together: the pallottine tender and still juicy, the sauce loose enough to coat, the spaghetti firm at the edges. The meatballs are the fragile element. Mixed with a fork or a machine instead of fingertips, the meat proteins bind too tightly and the result is springy and dry however much bread went in. Fried past ninety seconds, they are cooked through before they reach the sauce and the fifteen minutes that follow can only make them tougher.
The sauce should stay slightly thinner than you want it on the plate, because the pasta absorbs liquid as it is tossed and again as it sits. Milled tomato with half a cup of water simmered for twenty minutes lands in the right place. If it tightens while the pallottine finish, loosen it with pasta water rather than plain water, so you keep the starch that binds sauce to strand. Chitarra is porous, which is why it takes a light sauce beautifully and why it turns soft fast sitting in one.
Professional Mise en Place
Everything except the pasta can be done in advance, and the meatballs are better for it. Roll and fry them the day before, keep the sauce separate, and the service becomes a ten minute job.
Equipment and tools
Chitarra frame, or a pasta machine with a thick spaghetti cutter
Small deep pan for frying and a cooking thermometer
Wide shallow pan for the sauce, big enough to hold all the pallottine in one layer
Food mill or a fine sieve for the tomatoes
Two flat trays, one for the pasta nests and one for the meatballs
Prepared ahead
Pallottine rolled and fried, up to 1 day ahead and refrigerated on a covered tray
Tomato sauce cooked without the meatballs, up to 3 days ahead
Meat mixture made and rested, up to 12 hours before rolling
Chitarra nests dusted with semola, held at cool room temperature on the day
Pecorino grated and kept covered
Service setup
Sauce and pallottine together over low heat, the pan shaken not stirred
Pasta water at a rolling boil, salted, tasted once
A ladle of pasta water held back beside the stove
A spoonful of pallottine reserved for the top of each bowl
Bowls warmed to about 130°F (55°C)
Chef Tips
Ask the butcher to grind the veal and pork together, twice if he will. A single mixed grind distributes the pork fat evenly through the lean veal, which matters far more at this size than it would in a large meatball where the centre stays protected.
Weigh the first six pallottine on a small scale until your hands know 5 grams. It takes two minutes, and even sizing is the difference between meatballs that all finish together and a pan where a third of them are dry.
Keep a bowl of cold water beside the board and wet your palms every dozen balls. The mixture is soft and sticky by design, and dry hands tear it and pack it. Cold wet palms roll it smooth without compressing it.
For a crowd, fry the pallottine the day before and refrigerate them uncovered on a tray for the first hour so the surface dries. They go into the sauce straight from the refrigerator and need five minutes more than the timing given here.
Common Mistakes
Rolling them too big. Anything above 3/4 inch turns this into a different dish, because the balance of pasta to meat in each forkful is the recipe. Aim for a hazelnut, about 5 grams, and count on 60 to 80 from this quantity of meat.
Skipping the bread and milk. Meat this small has an enormous surface area and dries out in seconds without a panade to hold water in it. Bread crumb soaked in milk and squeezed only lightly is what keeps the centres juicy.
Dropping the meatballs into the sauce raw. They shed protein into the tomato, cloud it, and break apart the first time the pan is moved. Fry them for 60 to 90 seconds first, then finish them in the sauce.
Stirring the pan with a spoon. A wooden spoon knocks the pallottine apart and leaves you with mince in tomato sauce. Shake the pan by the handle instead, or move them gently with a slotted spoon.
Reducing the sauce too far. The pasta will drink a surprising amount as it is tossed and again while it waits. Keep the sauce slightly looser than looks right in the pan and correct it with pasta water, never plain water.
Wine Pairing
Biferno DOC Rosso: From Molise, immediately south, and built largely on Montepulciano with Aglianico behind it. It has the dark fruit and the gentle tannin that a light tomato ragu wants, without the weight of a long aged red. There is also a faint bitter almond note on the finish that picks up the pecorino in the pallottine.
Cesanese del Piglio DOCG: Lazio's serious red and an unexpectedly good match. Cesanese carries red berry fruit with a distinct peppery spice and soft tannin, and the spice reads directly alongside the nutmeg in the meat mixture. Serve it at 61°F (16°C), slightly cool, so the fruit stays bright against the tomato.
Valpolicella Classico DOC: The lightest bottle on the list and the one for a summer table. Sour cherry fruit, low tannin and high acidity make it nearly transparent against a simple tomato sauce, which is the point: it refreshes between forkfuls rather than adding a flavour. Avoid Ripasso and Amarone here, which would flatten the dish.
Barbera d'Asti DOCG: Chosen for acidity above everything else. Barbera has very little tannin and a great deal of fresh acidity, which is exactly what cuts the fried surface of the meatballs and matches the acidity of the tomato instead of fighting it. Take a bottling from steel rather than barrel so the wood does not intrude.
Storage & Reheating
Store the sauce with the pallottine in it, the one part of this dish that improves overnight, and keep the pasta separate. In an airtight container in the refrigerator it holds for 3 days. It freezes for up to 2 months, though the meatballs lose a little tenderness on thawing. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator.
Raw cut chitarra keeps on a semola dusted tray, loosely covered, for up to 8 hours at cool room temperature. For longer, freeze the nests solid on the tray, bag them for up to 1 month and cook them from frozen with about 1 minute added.
Rewarm the sauce and meatballs in a wide pan over low heat with a spoonful of water, shaking the pan rather than stirring so the pallottine stay whole. Leftover dressed pasta goes into a saute pan with a splash of water over medium heat for 2 minutes. Do not use a microwave, which overcooks the strands and turns the meatballs to rubber.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 portions:
Calories: 810 kcal
Total Fat: 31 g
Saturated Fat: 10 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 19 g
Cholesterol: 310 mg
Sodium: 1050 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 84 g
Fiber: 6 g
Total Sugars: 10 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 46 g
Lactose: 1.2 g
Principal micronutrients: iron, zinc, vitamin B12, calcium, potassium, niacin, lycopene
These figures are estimates. Most of the frying oil stays in the pan rather than in the pallottine, and most of the salt in the pasta water is discarded.
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