Spaghetti alla Chitarra with Octopus Ragu | Spaghetti alla Chitarra con Ragù di Polpo

Sep 22

11 min read

Spaghetti alla Chitarra con Ragù di Polpo

Spaghetti alla chitarra is the one pasta shape in Italy named after a musical instrument, and the instrument is real. The chitarra is a shallow beechwood frame strung with fine steel wires, and a sheet of egg and semola dough pressed through it with a rolling pin falls out as strands with four flat sides and four sharp corners. That square section is the point: round extruded spaghetti lets sauce slide off, while chitarra strands have corners and a porous surface that hold anything with body.

The ragu here is the Adriatic answer to the mountain original. Inland Abruzzo dresses this pasta with lamb and sweet pepper, but the fishing towns of the coast cut the same shape and give it octopus, braised slowly with tomato until the flesh goes from rubber to silk. It is a long braise and a short assembly, and the whole dish turns on one decision: cut the octopus small enough that every forkful of pasta carries some.

Yield: 4 main course servings. Prep: 1 hour. Cook: 1 hour 40 minutes. Rest: 30 minutes for the dough. Total: about 3 hours. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Abruzzo, the Teramo hills and the Adriatic coast around Vasto and Ortona.

The Story

The chitarra belongs to the province of Teramo, documented there since the early nineteenth century, and families still own the frame their grandmother used. In dialect the pasta cut on it is maccheroni alla chitarra, the older and more accurate name: the strands are square, not round. Restringing a chitarra was once the work of a travelling craftsman with a coil of steel wire, and the spacing of those wires decided the thickness of pasta a whole town ate.

Abruzzo runs from high mountain to open sea in under an hour and its cooking splits along that line. The Gran Sasso side is transhumance country, so the classic dressing for chitarra is ragu of lamb or castrato with sweet peppers. The coast from Pescara down to Vasto lives on the Adriatic, and its defining dish is brodetto, the fisherman stew built on whatever the boats brought back. Octopus was always part of that catch, abundant, cheap and ignored by anyone selling to the cities.

Ragu di polpo is what happens when the two halves of the region meet on one plate. The pasta comes from the hills, the sauce comes from the port, and the combination is now common enough along the Abruzzese coast that nobody there thinks of it as an invention. It also solves a real problem: a tomato braise of ninety minutes takes octopus past the point where its connective tissue breaks down into gelatin, which is what gives this sauce its body.

Ingredients

For the chitarra pasta

Durum wheat semola rimacinata, 2 1/3 cups (350 g)
Soft wheat flour type 00, 1/2 cup (70 g)
Whole eggs, large, 4
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Semola for dusting, about 1/4 cup (40 g)

For the octopus ragu

Whole octopus, cleaned, 2 1/2 lb (1.15 kg)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Yellow onion, finely diced, 1 medium
Carrot, finely diced, 1 small
Celery stalk, finely diced, 1
Garlic cloves, thinly sliced, 3
Crushed red pepper flakes, 1/2 tsp (1 g)
Dry white wine, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Canned San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, 2 cups (480 g)
Tomato paste, 1 tbsp (16 g)
Bay leaf, 1
Flat leaf parsley stems, tied, 6
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)
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, 2 tbsp (8 g)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preparation

Mixing and resting the dough

Combine the semola and the type 00 flour on a board, make a well and break in the eggs with the salt and the teaspoon of oil. Beat the eggs with a fork, pulling flour in from the wall of the well until the mixture is too thick to stir, then knead by hand for a full 10 minutes. The dough will feel stubborn and slightly dry, which is correct: it has to stay firm enough to be cut by the wires rather than pushed between them. Wrap it tightly and rest it 30 minutes at room temperature.

Rolling and cutting on the chitarra

Divide the dough into four and roll each piece into a sheet about 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick, noticeably thicker than for tagliatelle. Cut the sheet to the width of the frame, lay it across the wires and press firmly with a rolling pin in one pass, then run the pin back over the wires so they vibrate and release the strands. Toss the pasta with semola and leave it in loose nests. Without a chitarra, cut by hand to the same width, keeping the section square.

Cleaning and cutting the octopus

If the octopus is not already cleaned, remove the beak from the centre of the tentacles, take out the eyes and turn the head inside out to empty it. Rinse and pat dry. Cut the tentacles into pieces about 1/2 inch (12 mm) long and dice the head to match. This step decides the dish: large chunks sit on top of the pasta instead of in it, and chitarra strands are too narrow to carry them.

Building the soffritto

Warm the olive oil in a heavy casserole over medium low heat and add the onion, carrot and celery with a pinch of salt. Cook slowly for 12 to 15 minutes until soft and translucent, without letting them colour, then add the garlic and pepper flakes for a further 2 minutes. A soffritto rushed over high heat turns bitter, and in a sauce this long that flavour never leaves.

Sweating the octopus and deglazing

Raise the heat to medium, add the octopus and stir for 4 to 5 minutes. It will tighten, turn violet and release a surprising amount of liquid. Let that liquid reduce almost completely, because it is the most concentrated seafood flavour in the pot. Add the wine, let it bubble hard for 2 minutes until the alcohol smell has gone, and scrape the pan base clean.

The slow braise

Stir in the tomato paste and cook it for 1 minute, then add the crushed tomatoes, the bay leaf, the tied parsley stems and the salt. Bring to a bare simmer, cover with the lid slightly ajar and leave it 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes. Add no water in the first 45 minutes. The octopus passes through a tough stage at around 30 minutes and comes out tender the far side, so judge it only at the end by pressing a piece against the pot. Remove the bay leaf and parsley stems.

Salting the water and cooking the pasta

Bring the 5 quarts (4.7 l) of water to a rolling boil and add the coarse salt, which gives the salinity the pasta needs to season itself from the inside. Fresh chitarra takes only 3 to 4 minutes and is ready when the strands float and a bite still shows a fine pale line at the centre. Reserve a full cup of the cooking water, then lift the pasta straight into the sauce with tongs. That cloudy water is the starch that binds the sauce and cannot be replaced once it goes down the drain.

The mantecatura

Return the pan to medium heat with the pasta in the sauce and add a ladle of the cooking water. Toss continuously for 60 to 90 seconds, adding the raw olive oil halfway through. The sauce goes from loose to glossy and clinging as the starch, water and oil come together. Add more cooking water if it tightens. Off the heat, fold in the parsley, lemon zest and black pepper, and serve at once.

Plating

Serve on warm plates, not hot ones. A plate straight from a warming drawer keeps cooking the sauce and dries the strands at the edges, while one held at around 120°F (50°C) carries the temperature through the meal. Deep rimmed plates beat flat ones because the sauce stays gathered under the pasta instead of spreading and cooling.

Lift a portion with a carving fork and a ladle, twist it into a loose nest and set it slightly off centre. Do not compress the nest: chitarra strands are square and stack with air between them, and that air is part of the texture. Spoon a little octopus and sauce from the bottom of the pan over the top so the pieces are visible, then scatter the remaining parsley. No cheese, which genuinely flattens the sweetness of the octopus. A few drops of raw olive oil and nothing else.

Professional Technique

The technical heart of this dish is the collagen curve of octopus. Octopus muscle is unusually rich in collagen and almost free of fat, which gives it two windows of tenderness with a long tough zone between them. Under about 3 minutes of fierce heat the proteins have not had time to contract; past roughly 70 minutes of gentle simmering the collagen has converted to gelatin and the flesh gives way under a spoon. Anything in the middle is rubber. Cut into 1/2 inch (12 mm) pieces and braised for 90 minutes, this ragu lands solidly in the second window, and the gelatin released along the way thickens the sauce without flour, cream or reduction.

The second technique is the dry start. Octopus is close to 80 percent water, and adding stock at the beginning dilutes the liquid it is about to give up. Sweating it uncovered until its own exudate has almost evaporated drives that flavour into the soffritto and the pan base, and only then does the tomato go in. That is the difference between a sauce that tastes of octopus and one that tastes of tomato with octopus in it.

Texture and Moisture Control

Chitarra made with semola and whole eggs behaves unlike dried pasta. It hydrates fast, so the window between al dente and soft is perhaps 45 seconds wide, and it sheds a great deal of surface starch in that time. Both facts work in your favour: cook it a shade under, finish it in the sauce and use the heavily starched water as the binder. The correct final texture is a strand tender all the way through with a faint resistance at the corners.

The emulsion is built in the pan, not in the pot. Starch granules from the cooking water, the gelatin from the octopus and the raw olive oil added at the end form a sauce that coats rather than pools. It needs continuous motion and moderate heat: too cool and the oil separates into beads, too hot and the water flashes off before the starch can work. When the sauce stops running off the strands and starts following them it is done, and further tossing only dries it. If service is delayed, loosen it off the heat with a spoonful of the hot reserved water, never with plain water or more oil.

Professional Mise en Place

The braise is long and the finish is 90 seconds, so everything except the mantecatura is staged in advance.

Equipment and tools

Chitarra frame, or a sharp knife and a steady hand
Heavy casserole or Dutch oven with a lid, 5 quart (4.7 l) capacity
Wide sauté pan large enough to toss the whole batch of pasta
Tongs, a ladle, a spider for lifting the pasta
Trays dusted with semola for the cut pasta nests

Prepared ahead

Octopus ragu, up to 2 days ahead and better on the second day, refrigerated
Soffritto vegetables diced and kept covered, on the day
Pasta cut and nested on semola, up to 3 hours ahead at room temperature
Parsley chopped and lemon zested at the last moment, never in advance
Salted pasta water at a rolling boil before anything else starts

Service setup

Ragu warm in the sauté pan, loosened to a spoon coating consistency
A cup of hot starchy cooking water reserved beside the stove
Raw finishing olive oil measured and within reach
Plates warming at around 120°F (50°C), not hotter
Parsley, lemon zest and pepper mill lined up for the final fold

Chef Tips

Buy octopus frozen and thaw it slowly in the refrigerator, even if fresh is available. Freezing ruptures the cell walls and does most of the tenderizing for you, which is why the fishmongers in Vasto sell more frozen octopus than fresh. Beating it on rocks and dropping a cork in the pot are folklore.

Make the ragu the day before. Octopus braise improves overnight in a way few sauces do, because the gelatin sets, redistributes and melts again on rewarming, carrying flavour into every piece.

If the strands come out joined along one edge, the sheet is too thick or too moist. Roll thinner by one setting and dust both faces with semola before laying it on the wires. A dough that cuts cleanly makes a sound like a plucked string when the wires release.

Taste the sauce for salt only after the braise, never before. Octopus carries seawater in its flesh and gives much of it up over ninety minutes, so a sauce seasoned at the start can finish far too salty once reduced. Add at the end, in small amounts, tasting between each.

Common Mistakes

Cutting the octopus into large pieces. Whole tentacles look impressive but sit on top of narrow chitarra strands instead of mixing through them, and the dish separates into pasta and garnish. Pieces of about 1/2 inch (12 mm) make it a ragu.

Judging tenderness at the halfway point. Octopus tightens badly at around 30 minutes, and a cook who tests it then decides the batch has failed. Keep the simmer gentle and test only after 75 minutes.

Boiling the braise instead of simmering it. A hard boil drives moisture out faster than collagen converts, so the sauce reduces to paste while the octopus is still tough. The surface should barely move, lid slightly ajar.

Draining the pasta in a colander. That throws away the starched water the sauce needs. Reserve a cup first and lift the pasta into the pan with tongs.

Adding grated cheese. Pecorino or parmigiano buries the sweetness the long braise worked to develop and turns the sauce grainy. Finish with raw oil, parsley and lemon zest instead.

Wine Pairing

Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo DOC: The most complete match on the list and the one drunk with this dish on its home coast. Made from Montepulciano grapes given brief skin contact, it has the red cherry fruit of a light red with the acidity and serving temperature of a white, which is what a tomato sauce built on seafood asks for. Its faint tannin meets the octopus without overpowering it.

Offida Pecorino DOCG: From just north in the Marche, and the white with enough shoulders for this sauce. Pecorino is thick textured for an Italian white, with ripe yellow fruit, an anise note and firm acidity underneath, so it carries the weight of the ragu where a thinner wine vanishes. Its salty finish picks up the mineral edge the octopus leaves.

Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC: The regional red, and it works here provided you choose a young unoaked bottling and serve it at around 60°F (16°C). Its soft tannin and dark plum fruit have real affinity with long cooked tomato, and after ninety minutes the octopus has the body to stand up to a red. An oaked riserva would flatten the dish.

Verdicchio di Matelica DOC: Grown inland at altitude, which makes it tauter and more savoury than the better known Castelli di Jesi wines. Its high acidity cuts the oil of the mantecatura cleanly, and the bitter almond finish that defines Verdicchio runs alongside the parsley and lemon zest rather than competing with them.

Storage & Reheating

Store the ragu and the pasta apart and never refrigerate the finished dish, which sets into a block. The sauce keeps in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3 days and improves for the first two. It freezes for up to 3 months in a flat sealed container, since the gelatin protects the octopus from the drying that spoils most frozen seafood. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, never in a microwave.

Fresh uncooked 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 straight from frozen with 1 minute added. Never refrigerate raw egg pasta uncovered, since it dries unevenly and the strands crack.

Rewarm the ragu in a wide pan over low heat with 2 tablespoons of water, stirring until it is hot through and loosened back to a coating consistency. For leftover dressed pasta the only honest method is a sauté pan over medium heat with a splash of water and a lid for 2 minutes, tossing once. Avoid the microwave, which heats the sauce faster than the pasta.

Nutrition

Per serving, based on 4 main course portions:

Calories: 690 kcal
Total Fat: 24 g
Saturated Fat: 4 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 19 g
Cholesterol: 260 mg
Sodium: 880 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 78 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 42 g
Principal micronutrients: iron, selenium, copper, vitamin B12, niacin, potassium, lycopene