Trofie with Red Prawns, Zucchini Cream and Stracciatella | Trofie con Gamberi Rossi, Crema di Zucchine e Stracciatella
Three Italian regions meet in this bowl and none of them gives way. The trofie are Ligurian, the short twisted shapes of the coast between Recco and Sori, rolled from nothing but semola and water. The prawns are Sicilian, landed at Mazara del Vallo, sweet enough to eat raw and ruined by a few seconds of heat. The stracciatella is from Puglia, the torn milky heart of a burrata, and it goes in cold at the last moment.
What holds them together is a zucchini cream made with almost nothing: blanched zucchini, a little of their cooking water, olive oil and salt, blended until it is bright green and loose enough to coat pasta. No cream, no butter, no stock. The vegetable supplies the sauce, the pasta water supplies the binding starch, and the two richest elements on the plate are the ones that never see the pan.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 35 minutes. Cook: 20 minutes. Total: about 1 hour. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Regions: Liguria for the pasta, Sicily for the prawns, Puglia for the cheese.
The Story
Trofie come from the Golfo Paradiso, the stretch of Ligurian coast just east of Genoa, and the name is traced to the local verb for rubbing, since each one is made by rolling a piece of dough along a board with the side of the hand until it twists into a spindle with two tapered ends. They were a poor pasta, semola and water with no egg, made in quantity by women who could turn out hundreds an hour. The twist is not decoration: it gives the dough a spiral groove that grips a thin sauce, which is why Liguria married them to pesto.
The prawns bring a different history. The gambero rosso fished out of Mazara del Vallo lives at depths of several hundred metres, and its flesh carries so much natural sweetness and so little connective tissue that the Sicilian fleet has eaten it raw on the boat for as long as anyone can remember. Applying real heat to it is a waste of money and of the animal.
Stracciatella is the youngest of the three, born in Andria in Puglia in the early twentieth century when cheesemakers began tearing leftover mozzarella curd into strips and soaking it in cream rather than throwing it away. Sealed inside a pouch of pasta filata it became burrata; sold on its own it stayed stracciatella, which means little shreds. Heating it destroys both the texture and the point of it.
Ingredients
For the trofie
Durum wheat semola rimacinata, 2 1/2 cups (300 g)
Warm water, about 2/3 cup (150 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Extra semola for the board, as needed
For the zucchini cream
Zucchini, preferably small and firm, 1 1/2 lb (680 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Garlic clove, whole and lightly crushed, 1
Fine sea salt, 3/4 tsp (4.5 g)
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
Ice water for the ice bath, as needed
For the prawns
Whole red prawns, gamberi rossi, 1 1/4 lb (570 g), about 12 large
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Fine sea salt, a pinch per portion
Lemon zest, finely grated, from 1/2 lemon
For finishing
Stracciatella di burrata, 5 oz (140 g), at cool room temperature
Reserved pasta cooking water, about 1 cup (240 ml)
Coarse sea salt for the pasta water, 2 tbsp (25 g) for 5 quarts (4.7 l)
Basil leaves, small, 8
Extra virgin olive oil, for the plates
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Make and roll the trofie
Mound the semola on a board, add the salt and work in the warm water a little at a time until you have a firm dough, then knead for 10 minutes until smooth and stiff. It should feel harder than bread dough. Rest it covered for 30 minutes. Pull off pieces the size of a chickpea and roll each under the side of your palm with a light dragging motion so it twists into a spindle with two thin ends. Space them on a semola dusted tray. Expect the first twenty to be ugly.
Clean the prawns and save the heads
Twist the heads from the bodies and set them aside. Peel the tails, leaving the last segment on, and lift out the dark intestinal vein with the point of a knife. Lay the tails on a cold plate, cover and refrigerate. Red prawn flesh warms fast, so it stays cold until the moment it is needed.
Draw the flavour from the heads
Warm 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a small pan over low heat, add the heads and press them firmly with the back of a spoon so the orange liquid inside runs into the oil. Let them sizzle gently for 4 minutes, never hard enough to brown, then strain through a fine mesh sieve and press the solids once more. This coral oil is the only place in the dish where the prawn is properly cooked.
Blanch the zucchini and hold the colour
Cut the zucchini into coins about half an inch thick. Boil them in well salted water for 4 to 5 minutes, until a knife slides through with no resistance, and lift them straight into ice water. The ice bath stops the cooking and fixes the chlorophyll: zucchini left to cool in air turn from bright green to olive within minutes. Keep 1/2 cup (120 ml) of the blanching water.
Blend the cream
Drain the zucchini thoroughly and press out the excess water, which would otherwise make a thin sauce that slides off the pasta. Blend them with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil, the crushed garlic, the salt and a few tablespoons of the blanching water, adding more only until the purée turns glossy and falls slowly from the blade. Taste and season properly now, because once it meets the pasta there is little room to correct.
Cook the trofie and manage the water
Bring 5 quarts (4.7 l) of water to a rolling boil and salt it with 2 tablespoons of coarse salt, less than you would use for dried pasta because the sauce is already seasoned and the cheese brings salt of its own. Fresh trofie need 4 to 6 minutes and they float before they are ready, so ignore the float and taste one: yielding outside with a firm chewy core. Reserve a full cup of water before you drain.
Mantecare off the heat
Warm the zucchini cream in a wide pan over the lowest flame, without letting it bubble, then take the pan off the heat. Add the drained trofie with a ladle of pasta water and toss hard for a minute, tilting and shaking the pan rather than stirring, until the starch pulls the cream into a glossy coating that clings to the twists. Finished correctly the pasta moves as one mass and leaves no puddle.
Dress the prawns and plate at once
Slice the raw prawn tails in half lengthwise or leave them whole, season with a pinch of salt, a few drops of coral oil and the lemon zest, and let them sit for no more than a minute. Serve the pasta at once, arrange the prawns over it so the residual heat turns them opaque only at the edges, and spoon the stracciatella on last, never warmed. Finish with basil and black pepper.
Plating
Warm the bowls, but only just. A plate hot enough to hold a roast will cook the prawns through and turn the stracciatella into a greasy pool, so aim for hand warm, around 120°F (50°C). Use wide shallow bowls with a flat base, which let the pasta sit in a single layer instead of piling into a mound that steams itself.
Twist the trofie into the centre of each bowl so they sit low and even. Lay three prawn tails over the top, spaced apart, cut side up if you have halved them. Spoon the stracciatella in two or three loose heaps beside the prawns rather than over them, so the white, the red and the green stay legible.
Finish with a thread of coral oil traced around the pasta and take the bowls to the table straight away. The dish is meant to be stirred at the last second by the person eating it, which is when the cold cheese meets the warm pasta and the prawns give up their sweetness.
Professional Technique
The governing technique is thermal separation. Three elements want three different temperatures, and the construction fails if they are forced to share one. The pasta and its cream must be hot enough to carry aroma, the prawns barely warmed so the flesh stays translucent, and the stracciatella cool or it separates into curd and fat. Building in that descending order, sauce first, prawns second, cheese last, is the only sequence in which all three arrive intact.
The second technique is the coral oil drawn from the heads. Prawn heads hold the hepatopancreas, which carries most of the animal's flavour and all of its colour, and a few minutes of gentle pressure in warm oil transfers both into a fat you can spoon wherever you want it. The heat must stay low: above a gentle sizzle the proteins scorch and the oil turns bitter and muddy brown instead of clear orange.
The third is the mantecatura done off the flame. Pasta water is a dilute starch suspension, and agitated with a fat based sauce it acts as an emulsifier, binding the two into a coating rather than a liquid. Heat is the enemy because the zucchini purée splits and dulls if it boils, so working the pasta hard off the fire gives the emulsion without the risk.
Texture and Moisture Control
Water is the enemy of the zucchini cream and the preparation is arranged around removing it. Zucchini are more than ninety percent water, and blanched pieces that go into the blender still dripping produce a sauce that looks right in the pan and then breaks into a green puddle under the pasta. Drain them hard, press them in a sieve, and add the blanching liquid back a spoonful at a time, until the purée is glossy rather than runny.
The starch works in the opposite direction. Fresh trofie shed a great deal of it, so this cooking water is thicker and more useful than the water from dried pasta. Salt it lightly, at roughly half the usual rate, because you will be concentrating it into the sauce and the stracciatella is already salted.
Doneness is judged by bite, not by the clock or the float. Fresh semola pasta rises long before the interior is cooked, so taste from minute four and stop while there is still a firm chewy core, since it keeps cooking during the mantecatura. The prawns are not cooked at all, only warmed, and should still be translucent at the centre when the bowl reaches the table.
Professional Mise en Place
Everything except the pasta and the final toss can be ready before a guest arrives, which is what makes a dish with a ninety second window manageable.
Equipment and tools
Wooden board with a slightly rough surface for rolling the trofie
Large pot for the pasta and a second saucepan for blanching the zucchini
Bowl of ice water set up before the zucchini go into the pan
Blender or immersion blender and a fine mesh sieve
Wide sauté pan with sloping sides for the mantecatura
Prepared ahead
Trofie rolled and dusted with semola, up to 4 hours ahead on a tray, or frozen
Zucchini cream blended and refrigerated, up to 1 day ahead
Coral oil strained and kept covered at room temperature, same day only
Prawns cleaned, tails on a cold plate under cover in the refrigerator
Stracciatella taken out 20 minutes before service to lose its chill
Service setup
Pasta water at a rolling boil and correctly salted before the cream is warmed
Zucchini cream warming in the wide pan over the lowest possible heat
Measuring cup beside the pot to catch the cooking water before draining
Bowls hand warm, prawns, basil, lemon zest and pepper mill within reach
Cheese spooned only after the plates have left the pass, never before
Chef Tips
Buy the prawns whole with the heads firmly attached and look at the joint between head and body. A head that has darkened or loosened means the animal has been out of the water too long, and since these are eaten close to raw there is nowhere for that to hide. Red prawns frozen at sea are a good option and often fresher than what sits on ice at the counter.
Use small zucchini with tight skin and few seeds. Large ones carry a watery seeded core that dilutes the cream and pushes the colour toward grey; if that is all you can find, scrape the seeds out before blanching. The trombetta variety grown in Liguria holds its green better than most.
If you cannot roll trofie by hand, buy good fresh ones. Failing that, use casarecce or gemelli, which have the same twisted groove and behave almost identically in the toss. Penne and fusilli are not substitutes: the sauce sits inside them instead of clinging to the outside.
Keep a small jar of the coral oil back and use it to finish a risotto or a plate of raw fish. It keeps three days refrigerated and is far too good to leave in the pan, which is where most cooks abandon it.
Common Mistakes
Cooking the prawns. Red prawns have almost no connective tissue and turn from sweet and silky to chalky and mealy in under a minute of real heat. They go on raw and let the pasta warm them, which is the whole reason for buying an expensive prawn in the first place.
Heating the stracciatella. It is a fresh cheese soaked in cream and it splits into curds and oil the moment it meets a hot surface. Spoon it on at the very end, straight from the container, onto pasta that has already left the stove.
Skipping the ice bath. Zucchini left to cool in air keep cooking in their own heat and their chlorophyll degrades, so the cream comes out the colour of old pesto. Thirty seconds in ice water is what keeps it bright green all the way to the table.
Letting the zucchini cream boil. Brought to a simmer, the purée loses its colour and the emulsion breaks, releasing a ring of oil around the pasta. Warm it gently and finish the toss with the pan off the heat entirely.
Salting the pasta water as heavily as usual. Between the seasoned cream, the coral oil and the stracciatella there is already plenty of salt in the bowl, and a cup of aggressively salted water concentrated into the sauce will push the whole dish over. Use about half the normal quantity.
Wine Pairing
Riviera Ligure di Ponente Pigato DOC: The Ligurian answer, from the same coast as the pasta. Pigato grown near the sea has a herbal and salty edge with ripe yellow fruit behind it, and that saline quality echoes the sweetness of the raw prawn rather than competing with it. It has enough body for the fat of the stracciatella without turning heavy.
Cinque Terre DOC: A dry white from the terraces above the Ligurian sea, built mainly on Bosco with Albarola and Vermentino. It is lean, mineral and quietly bitter on the finish, which cuts the cream of the cheese and keeps the palate awake. Serve a young bottle cold, at about 46°F (8°C).
Vermentino di Gallura DOCG: Grown on decomposed granite in northern Sardinia, this is the most structured Vermentino in Italy and the safest choice if the dish is generously dressed. Its citrus acidity lifts the zucchini cream, and the faintly bitter almond finish sits well against the sweetness of the prawns.
Etna Bianco DOC: Carricante from the volcanic slopes, the Sicilian bottle to pour if the prawns matter most to you. Its high acidity and stony smoky depth mirror the sea character of the gambero rosso, while the texture Etna whites develop gives it weight enough to meet the cheese.
Franciacorta DOCG: The sparkling option, and a convincing one. A brut bottling with modest dosage brings a fine persistent bead that scrubs the fat of the stracciatella off the palate, and its bread crust and hazelnut notes add a savoury layer the still whites cannot. Avoid anything with obvious residual sugar.
Storage & Reheating
This dish is not built to be kept and the assembled bowl should be eaten within minutes, but the components behave better. Uncooked trofie hold on a semola dusted tray for 4 hours at room temperature, keep 2 days refrigerated under a cloth, and freeze for 2 months: cook them from frozen, adding a minute. The zucchini cream keeps 2 days refrigerated in an airtight container and the coral oil keeps 3 days.
Raw prawns must be used the day they are bought and never refrozen once thawed. Stracciatella lasts 2 days in its own liquid. If you have dressed pasta left over, refrigerate it for 1 day only and reheat it in a pan over low heat with a splash of water, tossing constantly, never in a microwave, which overcooks the prawns and splits the cheese.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 portions:
Calories: 680 kcal
Total Fat: 26 g
Saturated Fat: 9 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 175 mg
Sodium: 890 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 78 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 34 g
Lactose: 2.5 g
Principal micronutrients: iodine, selenium, zinc, vitamin B12, vitamin C, potassium, calcium, phosphorus
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the pasta water is discarded, and the final sodium depends mainly on how much stracciatella reaches each bowl.
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