Question: What is Orecchiette Pasta like?
Answer: Well Jill, the best answer is this photo above. This shape of pasta is typical from Puglia region (Southern Italy) and its most known recipe is with broccoli.
There are similar shapes of pasta. In Sardinia, for example, they call it "macarrones de punzu", which means hand noodles because of the movement made with the hand to have that shape - the dough is divided in many long strips and then cut with thumbs.
It is better to use a pasta dough recipe with eggs to prepare this pasta shape, as the eggs will add elasticity to the dough that helps the thumbs movements to create the shell shape.
Cooking pasta has a lot to do with its dressing, and this pasta also matches a good ragu recipe - meat sauce, with grated cheese.
