GENTILE Durum Wheat Semolina pasta 500g "Paccheri - 18 minutes"

Wide, smooth tubes from Campania, big enough to stuff by hand. Two ingredients and no more: durum wheat semolina and water.

Fill them with ricotta and bake, or leave them loose under a chunky meat or seafood sauce. Too big for anything thin.

Cook for 18 minutes in plenty of well-salted boiling water and drain it a shade early — bronze-drawn pasta keeps cooking in a hot sauce. Save a ladle of the cooking water to loosen the sauce at the end.

Durum wheat semolina, water. May contain traces of soy and mustard.

Nutritional Facts (per 100g): Energy: 1460 kJ / 336 kcal, Fat: 1.5g of which Saturates: 0.5g, Carbohydrates: 69g of which Sugars: 4g, Fiber: 4g, Protein: 14g, Salt: <0.01g.

Pastificio Gentile has made pasta at Gragnano, in the hills behind the bay of Naples, since 1876. This is Pasta di Gragnano PGI, a protected name that only pasta made in the town may carry. The dough is pushed through bronze dies, which leave the surface rough enough for sauce to cling to instead of sliding off, and then dried the slow way — the Cirillo method, three or four days in cells where heaters stand in for the sun and fans for the wind. Industrial lines do it in a day or less.

Five hundred grams. Store in a cool, dry place, out of direct sunlight.