A pasta famous in Celle and thanks to Celle..
“One can taste the real and genuine pici only in this square”. For half a century this motto has welcomed visitors willing to taste the real pici during the famous Pici festival in Celle sul Rigo. Pici are the poor dish par excellence whose only ingredients are water and flour. They were the everyday pasta for the locals who used to prepare egg pasta only during festive days. Today few eggs are added to the recipe to make the dough firmer. Pici are a unique kind of pasta thanks to the manual dexterity handed down from generation to generation, giving the dough the right compactness and porosity to allow a perfect match with the sauce. Our pici have nothing to do with the common spaghetti machine made pici; they are a handmade product, an essential feature to safeguard their taste and characteristics.
The dough must be not too compact, nor too soft, once it is ready we cut little strips out of it and we start to appiciare which means to stretch the little strips over a rough wooden board. Once ready, they are put into corn flour. The traditional sauce for our pici is aglione; a spicy, simple and tasty sauce made with olive oil, garlic, chilli pepper, tomato paste and very little fresh tomato.
