Trofie

Trofie are a fresh Ligurian pasta made from nothing but soft wheat flour, water and salt. A piece of dough the size of a chickpea is pushed diagonally across the work surface with the edge of the palm, which simultaneously stretches and twists it into a thin spiral with two pointed ends, about three centimetres long.

The shape exists to hold pesto. A cold, oil-based sauce slides straight off smooth pasta; the spiral grooves catch it. The uneven thickness, fatter in the middle and fine at the tips, gives you two textures in the same bite, which is why trofie eat better than an extruded twist of the same size.

The name almost certainly comes from the dialect verb strofuggiâ, to rub, which is exactly what the hands are doing. A darker inland version made with chestnut flour, trofie di castagne, is worth seeking out in autumn.

On their own, mild and wheaty, with a firm chew and a rougher surface than any factory pasta. There is no egg, so the flavour is clean rather than rich, and the texture is springy rather than tender.

The point of them is what happens with sauce. Because they are small and twisted, every piece comes loaded, so a plate of trofie al pesto tastes considerably more of basil, garlic, cheese and olive oil than the same amount of pesto on penne would. The potatoes soften the whole dish and the green beans cut it.

Chestnut trofie are a different proposition: sweeter, nuttier, slightly gritty, and best with a simple butter or a walnut sauce rather than pesto.

Cook the whole dish in one pot. Cube a waxy potato and put it into boiling salted water first, add halved green beans halfway through, then the trofie for the last three or four minutes if fresh, seven to nine if dried.

Never heat the pesto. Put it in a warmed serving bowl, loosen it with two tablespoons of the cooking water, warm and not boiling or the oil splits and the basil blackens, then drain the pasta and vegetables and tip them in. Toss off the heat.

The starch released by the potatoes and the pasta is what turns loose pesto into a sauce that clings. That is the whole reason the potatoes are in the dish, and skipping them gives you a thinner, oilier plate.

Away from pesto, trofie work with a walnut sauce, light seafood sauces and vegetables. They are wrong for meat ragù: too small, and they get lost.

Fresh trofie keeps two or three days in the fridge, laid on a tray, dusted with flour and covered with a cloth rather than cling film, which traps moisture and welds the pieces to each other. To freeze them raw, spread them apart on a tray until solid and then bag them: two months, cooked straight from frozen with an extra minute. Dried trofie sits in a cupboard for around two years, with the date on the box as the reference, and what it loses over that time is wheat aroma rather than anything structural.

The pesto is the part that keeps worst. In the fridge under a finger of olive oil it holds four or five days, and the surface darkens wherever that oil layer breaks and air reaches the basil. Frozen in ice cube portions it keeps about three months. Do not freeze trofie already dressed with it: the basil goes dark and the cheese turns grainy on thawing, and neither of those reverses.

A handmade trofia has tapered, asymmetric ends and a twist that is clearly there but never regular. They are short, three to four centimetres, and nothing longer: if what you are holding runs past five centimetres, it is long fusilli or gnocchetti under another name. On a shelf abroad the shapes mistaken for them are casarecce, which are longer and folded into a groove rather than twisted, cavatelli, which are hollowed out and not twisted at all, and Sardinian gnocchetti, which are ridged little shells.

In dried pasta the die matters more than the brand on the box. A matte, faintly floury surface means a bronze die and pesto that clings; smooth and glossy means Teflon, and the sauce slides to the bottom of the plate. Trofie di castagne should be genuinely brown and smell of chestnut before they are cooked, and if the colour came from cocoa or toasted flour the label says so. Fresh vacuum-packed trofie in the chilled aisle costs roughly double the dried version.

In the US, dried trofie from Ligurian and Italian producers are stocked by Eataly, Whole Foods and online importers at $4 to $8 per pound. Look for 'trafilata al bronzo' on the pack: with an oil-based sauce, the rough surface is the difference between pesto that clings and pesto that pools.

In the UK, Waitrose, Ocado and Italian delis carry dried trofie at £2.50 to £5 for 500g, or £5 to £10 per kilo. Fresh trofie appear in Italian shops in London and are worth the premium if you are eating them the same day.

For the pesto, the label to look for is Basilico Genovese DOP among the ingredients, and no cashews or sunflower oil. Fresh refrigerated pesto beats jarred every time; the jarred kind has usually been heat-treated, which is exactly what you are told never to do to pesto.

Recco, Camogli, Sori and the villages behind them, the stretch of coast east of Genoa known as the Golfo Paradiso, are where pasta shops sell trofie made that morning and trattorie still roll their own. Recco is also the home of focaccia col formaggio, so plan to eat twice.

In Genoa's old town, the historic sciamadde serve trofie alongside farinata and vegetable tarts. The city hosts the Pesto World Championship every two years: a hundred competitors pounding DOP basil in marble mortars with wooden pestles, which is how it should be done and how almost nobody does it at home.

Inland, in the Fontanabuona valley and towards the Apennines, chestnut trofie appear on autumn menus. On the Cinque Terre you will pay tourist prices for an ordinary plate; go twenty minutes inland instead.