Priest Strangler Noodles - Strangozzi

I was unfamiliar with strangozzi noodles until I read this question on HubPages. Quizzing a friend that is half Italian and makes her own pasta, I learned that the strangozzi noodle is also sometimes called the priest strangler.The origin of that nickname seems a legend from the Umria region of Central Italy and it could be true or not. "Strangolare" means generally to strangle in Italian, but strangozzi may be a slang term derived from the verb. I hope our Italian readers will help us to understand that with their comments below.

This all reminds me of the pasta dishes with the nickname "Puttanesca", prepared quickly by ladies of the evening in old Italy and Sicily between guests. It was very quick to prepare, becuase restaurants often kept a kettle of sauce on the stove top all day and gave portions of it to the women at night, which they ate with angel hair or spaghettini pasta. The very thin pasta cooked in less than 5 minutes and dinner was served.

Each region of Italy has developed its own specialty pastas, sometimes with nicknames and stories to accompany them. This makes the regional cuisines even more colorful and fun to enjoy. Where Puttanesca uses thinner spaghetti or angel hair pasta, strangozzi uses thicker spaghetti, often hand made.

The strangozzi pasta is a speciality of the central Italian region known as Umbria, depicted in the map below, right. The noodles are thicker and a little more rough than spaghetti noodles. it is said that parish priests in Umbria quite often dined at the homes of parishioners that wanted to ensure that their priests left their homes well fed. Supposedly, a large quality of these noodles with sauce were served to the men of the cloth, suggesting that eating so much could strangle the priest - or at least his appetite.

To make the actual strangozzi noodles, you can make spaghetti by hand, but make it a little thicker than spaghetti. Alternatively, you can purchase the pasta hand-made from Italy. A recipe is available below.

I made this dish the night before publishing the Hub, so I could test it out. Instead of making pasta, though, I used some linguine noodles that I already had handy. Not as tasty as hand made strangozzi, surely, the linguine noodles were still very good in this dish.  

Note that the pasta recipe below does not include eggs. However, if you like egg noodles, you can add 2-3 eggs and reduce the amount of water used in the recipe.

My friend received a pasta maker for her wedding or as an anniversary, but always preferred to make her pasta by hand.

INGREDIENTS

• 2.75 Cups unbleached all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt or to taste
• 1/2 Cup plus a 3 TBSP room temperature H₂O (I cook with spring water)
• 1 Cup semolina for dusting the strands of strangozzi to help them dry separately

INSTRUCTIONS

• Clean your whole kitchen counter top area and sanitize it with purchased sanitizer or a solution of water and bleach. You may also want to use a large bread board for preapring the dough.
• Pour your measured flour onto a clean. sanitized kitchen counter top in a mound and form a well in the center of it.
• Pour salt into the well, followed by 1 Cup water and 3 TBSP water a little at a time while you mix the flour up over the water.
• When all water is added, mix the dough well. Adjust the flour/water with more or less as needed, if the dough is to sticky or too dry.
• Roll the dough into a ball, place it in a mixing bowl (cooking spray bowl to keep it from sticking), cover with a clean tea towel and set aside for 1 hour.
• Remove the dough from the bowl and roll out on a counter top or bread board that has been dusted with semolina. Roll it to about 1/16^th inch thick or a little thicker - thicker than spaghetti.
• Dust the top with semolina, fold the dough half over itself, and cut into 1/8^thinch strips or a bit wider. Unwind the cut strands, dust with more semolina, and set out to dry on the counter top.

Spoleto is a city in Umbria region, Italy.

INGREDIENTS

• Homemade pasta for 4 people
• 1/4 Cup olive oil
• 3 Cloves of garlic, and cut up (not chopped)
• 1/2 Red bell pepper, diced
• 1/4 tsp Ground red pepper
• One 14-16 oz can plum tomatoes
• Salt to taste
• Large pot of boiling salted water.

INSTRUCTIONS

• Place a large skillet over medium heat, heat the pan, and add 1/4 Cup olive oil.
• Heat the oil and add the garlic and both peppers. Stir and heat until lightly brown and fragrant.
• Add tomatoes, their juice, and salt to taste. Stir well.
• Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
• Taste for seasoning and add salt if needed.
• Simmer an additional 10 - 15 minutes until liquid is reduced.
• Boil the large pot of salted water and drop in the pasta. It should cook very quickly, in less than 5 minutes and it should be al dente. Otherwise, it may disintegrate to paste.
• Drain noodles and place them in the simmering skillet. Stir through and serve.