Orecchiette pasta are the shape of little ears. The logic in this is that each piece has a kink in it that catches any errant sauce; and it works best, as does most pasta, when the shapes of its accompaniments are similar.
This recipe pairs the orecchiette with cherry tomatoes, capers, zucchini, and pine nuts.
Home-style orecchiette: recipe interruptus.
Crush a garlic clove and warm it in half a cup of olive oil in a pan over low heat along with a sprinkling of dried marjoram and a small handful of pine nuts.
Dice a zucchini and add it, along with a punnet of halved cherry tomatoes and a couple of dozen desalted capers to the pan. Cook all this, gently stirring, for 15 minutes until the zucchini has absorbed the oil and garlic and marjoram flavours.
Then cover it, turn off the stove and go shopping, wash the car, read a chapter of your book, or walk the dog. The flavour intensifies if you allow the flavours to mingle for a few hours.
I walked the dog, the latest in a long line of foster greyhounds. Later, I cooked the pasta (I used one whole 500g pack) reheated the tomato/zucchini/pine nut/caper mixture gently, placed the cooked orecchiette in a large common serving dish about the size of a Kenworth steering wheel, and poured the sauce over the top. The finishing touch was a dozen torn basil leaves from the plant in the old laundry trough in the back garden. The teenagers helped themselves, laying waste to the bowl, and disappeared to do whatever teenagers do after dinner.
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