The Sip and Feast Podcast 16 - Pasta alla Norcina: Balancing Authenticity with Practicality

In late 2021 I fell in love with a relatively obscure dish, Pasta alla Norcina. Unknown to many in the New York metro area as it deviates from the red sauce-heavy dishes found in most of our local restaurants, it was clear I needed to create an instructional video and recipe to help bring this recipe to our audience. Doing so was not without its challenges. If you prefer video, watch the full episode 16 YouTube video version. Pasta alla Norcina hails from the town of Norcia in the southeastern part of Umbria, the region nestled in the center of Italy and bordered by Lazio, Tuscany, Marche, and Abruzzo. The town itself is known for its pork, and the sausage used for pasta alla Norcina, salsiccia di Norcia. This sausage consists of pork, garlic, white wine, and a touch of nutmeg - nothing like the fennel or spicy sausages more commonly found near my home on Long Island. Black truffles can also be found near Norcia making them a component of this dish, when in season. The scarcity and impracticality of these ingredients make it next to impossible for the everyday person to create a truly authentic version of this dish. In my effort to help shine a spotlight on pasta alla Norcina, I soon realized I had to find ways to improvise and make do with the ingredients available to me. In this episode, we discuss why pasta alla Norcina is relatively unknown in the US and go into greater detail on the challenges the ingredients present. We talk through and provide solutions to the ingredients and discuss how best to recreate as authentic a dish as possible for you, the home cook. Resource Links Pasta Bolognese Recipe Pasta alla Norcina Recipe Chicken Marsala Recipe If you enjoyed the Pasta alla Norcina - Balancing Authenticity with Practicality episode, leave us a comment below and let us know!   We love your questions.  Please send them to podcast@sipand11111feast.com (remove the 11111 for our contact).  There’s no question not worth asking. If you enjoy our weekly podcast, support us on Patreon and you will get 2 more bonus episodes each month! Thanks for listening! For a complete list of all podcast episodes, visit our podcast episode page. Transcript Intro James (00:00):Welcome back to the Sip and Feast podcast. Today we're going to talk about one of Italy's most underrated pastas. I don't know if that's right. I think every region of Italy thinks that they have the best pasta dishes. So, probably it could be what I would say Americans would think is one of Italy's most underrated pasta dishes. That's probably a more accurate statement, right, Tara? Tara (00:23):I think the reason we would assign the word underrated to this pasta is because it's not found here in the US. For us, it's underrated because we haven't heard enough about it. James (00:36):That makes sense completely. So, not to beat a dead horse, but the immigrants that all came to America from 1900 to 1920, it's like five million of them. Almost all of them came from … everybody knows Sicily, Naples, Calabria, Southern Italy, and they didn't come from the area that the dish we're talking about today, which is pasta Norcina, which is Umbria. Tara (01:00):That's right. Pasta Norcina background James (01:01):So, Tara, give people a background on this dish, so our listeners can actually picture what we're talking about and where we're talking about. Tara (01:09):Norcia, which is where pasta alla Norcina comes from, is a town in the southeastern part of Umbria, which is the region that is north of Rome, but south of Tuscany. So, somewhere kind of like in the middle of the country, certainly not where most of the Italian immigrants came from in the immigrant waves in the late 1800 and early 1900. And Norcia is actually famous for its pork. James (01:43):Okay. Tara (01:43):Were you aware of that? James (01:44):I am aware of that, but I don't think our audience is,