Autumn is just made for big soups such as minestrone, and this one is brim-full of mushrooms and mini pasta rings
While fregula is the most satisfying packet of pasta to grab from the shelf, the balls rolling and rising like a stress ball under fingers, bags of anelli (little rings) come a close second. They are also useful. Once, on the return journey from Palermo to Naples, three 1kg bags of Poiatti’s Anelli Siciliani No 3 wrapped in a towel made a half-decent pillow and defence against the thinly carpeted lobby of a Grimaldi Lines night ferry. A night that began with chips, several mini bottles of red wine each and rounds of cards next to a man who was one of the greatest lounge electric pianists we had ever heard, ended with cheeks on pasta.
It is in Sicily and Puglia where anelli (also the smaller anelletti, little rings) are most typical and often by far the best-stocked shape in shops and the highest pile on market stalls. In the small supermarket next to my partner’s family home in Gela on the south coast of Sicily, for example, 20 other shapes share three shelves, while rings of various sizes enjoy their own. Anelli can be served with sauce or in soup, but they are typically used for timballo al forno: the rings boiled for less time than usual, mixed with tomato sauce or ragù, reinforced with cheese, maybe vegetables, packed into a breadcrumbed tin and baked until golden. It is not only their form that makes rings so suited to baked pasta – especially timballi that you invert – it’s their substance. Despite their neat, small, curtain-ring form, less than 2cm in diameter anelli and anelletti are sturdy shapes that have a surprisingly long cooking time – Poiatti, for example, recommends 15 minutes for anelli. This is timing you jig when you make baked pasta – let’s say 10 for the boil, the rest in the oven.
UK readers: click to buy these ingredients from Ocado