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Italia Magnifica

Italian Recipe

Pici all’Aglione

Hand-rolled eggless noodles from the Val di Chiana in a tomato sauce built on aglione, the giant mellow garlic that perfumes without biting.

Hand-rolled eggless noodles from the Val di Chiana in a tomato sauce built on aglione, the giant mellow garlic that perfumes without biting.

Instructions

  1. Knead flour, 20 ml oil, a pinch of salt, and about 200 ml warm water into a firm, smooth dough. Rest 30 minutes under a bowl.

    40 min
  2. Roll the dough 1 cm thick, oil the surface lightly, and cut into thin strips. Roll each strip under your palms, from the center outward, into a long noodle the width of a bucatino. Park the pici on semolina.

    40 min
  3. Slice the aglione thin and melt it in the oil over the lowest heat, never coloring, until it crushes under a fork, 10 to 12 minutes; help it with a splash of wine.

    12 min
  4. Crush the garlic into the oil, add the tomatoes, breaking them by hand, the chile, and salt. Simmer until thick and sweet, about 20 minutes.

    20 min
  5. Boil the pici in well-salted water until tender with a proud chew, 4 to 6 minutes depending on thickness.

    6 min
  6. Transfer the pici to the sauce with a ladle of their water and toss over the heat until each noodle is gloved in red. Serve hot, no cheese required.

    3 min

Chef's Tips

  • No aglione? Tame your garlic: Blanch ordinary cloves twice from cold water before melting them in oil; you lose the bite and keep the perfume, which is the whole idea.
  • Irregular is authentic: Pici should vary like handwriting. Even thickness matters only within a single noodle, so it cooks evenly end to end.
  • The same pici take famously to briciole, fried breadcrumbs, when tomatoes are out of season; keep that trick for winter.

Nutrition Facts

Calories
588.26
Protein
13.02g
Carbohydrates
88.37g
Fat
18.8g
Fiber
5.44g

Per serving

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Reading

Stories from Tuscany

Long reads from our writers on the ground.

  1. The magazineItalian Art History: From Renaissance to Modern
  2. The magazineTuscany Travel Guide