sf wrote:
Here in my area fregola is very uncommon, the only time I had it I was in a
restaurant run by sardinian owners and with a sardinian cook in a nearby
town, and they were good indeed. I know that many brands produce industrial
fregola but here I can't find even those.
They are made in a similar way to cous cous: starting from durum wheat
flour, and working in a earthenware dish, water gets slowly added to the
flour to obtain a medium-hard dough which gets worked with the fingertips in
order to produce small bits of the dough. These bits get left to dry for one
day and are then toasted in the oven. This toasting is what makes fregola
different from cous cous, and it also gives fregola a much harder surface
and texture, along with an amber-like color. The size of fregola bits is
usually bigger than that of cous cous.
The most famous fregola dish is "fregola alle arselle", "fregola with
clams", exactly the dish I had in that restaurant.
Here's a recipe for fregola alle arselle and the end result is very akin to
what I had in that restaurant, but it doesn't describe the making of the
fregola, just the sauce with clams:
http://ricette.giallozafferano.it/Fregola-con-arselle.html
If someone is interested I can translate it.
One recipe I found for the preparation of fregola is this. I never tried
this so I can't guarantee a realistic result, it could be a strating point:
250 grams durum wheat semola (semola is thicker grained flour)
A pinch of sea salt
1 glass (circa 0,18 liters) lukewarm water
Put the semola in a wide dish and level it with you fingers. Dissolve the
salt in the glass of water and slowly pour it in the center of the dish,
work the semola with your fingertips moving and pushing it around the dish
until small balls start to form, continue to work it untill all the semola
forms into balls.
Lay carefully the fregola on a kitchen towel taking care that no balls group
together.
Let rest overnight or for 24 hours and lay it on a oven baking dish, bake at
150?C for about a 15 minutes, until the fregola will get its nice amber
color.
Remove from the oven and let completely cool down before using.
Boiling time is usually about 7-8 minutes, but it obviously depends to the
flour/water ratio and the time and tempereture in the oven.
--
ViLco
Let the liquor do the thinking
