Malloreddus

Malloreddus are Sardinia's signature dried pasta: short, ridged, hollow little shapes made from durum wheat semolina and water. Nothing else goes in: no egg, no fat, no soft wheat flour, no potato. That makes them naturally vegan and considerably more robust in the pot than their size suggests. They measure roughly 2 to 3 cm, curve inward at both ends, and carry a band of deep ridges across the back.

That shape is engineering, not decoration. The ridges catch sauce on the outside and the hollow collects it on the inside, so malloreddus hold onto thick, granular sauces (sausage meat, grated bottarga, lamb ragù, pulses) that would slide straight off a smooth pasta. It is the same logic as Puglia's orecchiette, applied to a smaller and thicker shape.

In the Campidano plain, the traditional dough is coloured with saffron dissolved in the mixing water, which turns the pasta a deep yellow and adds a faintly earthy, balsamic note. Plenty of malloreddus are made without it and stay the amber colour of plain semolina, so a yellow packet and a pale one can both be authentic.

The island uses several names for the same thing. Cigiones and ciciones in the north around Sassari and the Logudoro, macarones caidos in the Barbagia and around Nuoro, malloreddus in the south. The Italian trade name gnocchetti sardi is a twentieth-century export label, and it has confused more English-speaking cooks than any other name in the Italian pasta aisle.

Firmly, plainly wheaty. With only semolina and water in the dough, what you taste is the grain itself: nutty, faintly sweet, with the clean mineral edge that good durum has and soft-wheat pasta does not. There is no richness of the kind egg pasta brings, and none is wanted: the sauce supplies that.

The texture is the point. Malloreddus are dense and chewy, with real resistance under the tooth, and they stay that way on the plate for a good five minutes after draining. Anyone expecting the pillowy softness of potato gnocchi will be startled: this is closer to a very short, very thick rigatoni than to a dumpling.

When saffron is in the dough, it shows up as aroma more than flavour: a warm, hay-like note in the background rather than anything sharp. In the classic dish it meets the fennel seed in the Sardinian sausage and the sheep-milk tang of grated pecorino, and that trio, sweet tomato underneath, is what most people mean when they say a plate of pasta tastes like Sardinia.

Boil them in plenty of well-salted water for 10 to 13 minutes and start tasting at eight. They are thicker than they look and the centre stays raw easily. Unlike long pasta they forgive an extra minute, but do not drain them early to finish them in the pan for a long time, because the hollow fills with water and releases it onto the plate.

The dish to make first is malloreddus alla campidanese. Squeeze fresh Sardinian sausage out of its casing (the fennel-seed kind) and brown it hard in a little oil with finely chopped onion, breaking it up as it goes. Add passata, season, and let it simmer gently for forty minutes. Near the end, dissolve a pinch of saffron in a spoonful of the pasta water and stir it through. Drain the pasta while it still has bite, toss it in the sauce for a minute, and finish each plate with plenty of grated Sardinian pecorino. No cream, no garlic, no herbs beyond the fennel already in the sausage.

Beyond that, malloreddus take to the sea very well: grated bottarga over a base of garlic, olive oil and parsley, off the heat so it does not turn bitter; clams with their strained liquor; prawns and cherry tomatoes. Inland, they go with lamb or wild boar ragù, with salted ricotta, or with nothing more than fresh tomato and pecorino.

Two practical notes. Make more sauce than you would for a long pasta, because this shape absorbs and holds a lot of it. And grate the pecorino over the plate rather than stirring it into a hot pan, where it strings and clumps.

Dried malloreddus is a pantry product: unopened, the bag or box carries a best-before date printed by the producer, usually a long way out, and that date is the reference. Keep it somewhere dry and dark at 15 to 20 C, away from the stove and away from anything strongly scented, because semolina takes on smells. Once the pack is open, tip it into a sealed jar. Left loose in a humid kitchen the pasta draws moisture and the surface goes tacky, then the pieces stick where they touch; in very dry conditions it does the opposite and gets brittle and dusty, and the colour fades toward grey.

Fresh malloreddus bought from a shop counter is a different product with a short life, kept at 0 to 4 C for the few days the seller specifies. It freezes well spread on a tray until firm, then bagged, and goes into boiling water straight from minus 18 C. Cooked and dressed, it keeps covered in the fridge for a couple of days and keeps absorbing sauce, softening as it does.

The shape is small and specific: a stubby ridged shell about two centimetres long, curved, hollow underneath, with fine parallel grooves running along the outside from the basket or board it was rolled on. On a pack the name will be malloreddus or gnocchetti sardi, and the ingredients should read durum wheat semolina and water, with no egg. Bronze-drawn pasta, trafilata al bronzo, looks matte, chalky and pale with a dusting of flour; the smooth glossy yellow kind has been pushed through a teflon die and holds sauce less well. Saffron versions are a deeper gold and say so on the label.

Several shapes get sold as near enough. Cavatelli from Molise and Puglia are similar in size but smooth, without the ridges. Potato gnocchi are soft, fresh and several times the weight. Conchiglie shells are machine-made, larger and open. A Sardinian bronze-drawn pack costs noticeably more than a supermarket own-brand bag of the same weight, and the difference shows in the rough surface.

In the US, look for them labelled gnocchetti sardi as often as malloreddus. Italian importers, Eataly, online specialists and most well-stocked supermarkets carry the industrial version at roughly $3 to $5 per pound; bronze-drawn Sardinian artisan brands, and the saffron versions, run about $8 to $14 per pound. In the UK, Italian delis and online grocers stock them at around £5 to £9 per kilo for standard packs and £12 to £18 per kilo for small Sardinian producers.

Read the ingredient list before the front of the pack. It should say durum wheat semolina and water, full stop. Egg, soft wheat flour or starch means you are holding something else. Colour is the second check: a warm amber tells you the semolina is good, a deep even yellow means saffron in the dough, and a pale chalky white means neither.

The supporting cast is harder to source than the pasta. Fresh Sardinian fennel sausage is the one ingredient worth hunting for at an Italian butcher; failing that, buy a coarse Italian sausage and add half a teaspoon of crushed fennel seed per 300 g. Pecorino sardo is stocked by good cheese counters. Pecorino romano works but is saltier and will bury the saffron. Bottarga di muggine, grey mullet roe, keeps for months in the fridge and is sold whole or grated by the same importers.

Sardinia, and specifically the south. The Campidano plain between Cagliari and Sanluri is where the dish comes from, and the towns across it (Serramanna, Villacidro, Guasila, Samassi) cook it as everyday food rather than as heritage. San Gavino Monreale and Turri, a little further north, grow the saffron that goes into it, harvested by hand every autumn.

Cagliari is the easy base. Trattorie in the Marina district below the old town serve malloreddus alla campidanese as a matter of course, and the Mercato di San Benedetto, one of the largest covered markets in Europe, sells the sausage, the pecorino and the bottarga under one roof. On 1 May the city fills up for the feast of Sant'Efisio, when thousands of people in traditional dress process through the streets and the food is at its most emphatically Sardinian.

Inland the name changes and so does the hand that makes them: ask for macarones caidos in the Barbagia and around Nuoro, cigiones or ciciones in the Logudoro and around Sassari. On the north-east coast, in Gallura, the version to order is the seafood one, with bottarga or clams, alongside the Vermentino di Gallura DOCG grown on the granite hills behind the beaches.