Paccheri with Seafood

On my recent visits to Abruzzo, I have been impressed as never before by the region’s Adriatic coast, with its picturesque trabocchi, the little fishing shacks that hover over the water at the end of long wooden piers, and by the fresh coastal cuisine we enjoyed, meal after meal. Here’s a recipe inspired by the delightful lunches of that visit, which we sometimes ate in view of the trabocchi, where the smoke rising from the ends of the piers told me the fishermen were cooking lunch, too. It is just the kind of fresh-from-the-sea dish they make, lots of shellfish quickly cooked in garlicky tomato sauce, then tossed with a pasta that traps the nuggets of fish and sauce in its hollows. My choice are the fat tubes called paccheri, a sort of giant rigatoni. In my opinion, there is no greater gustatory experience than the marvelous squirting that fills your mouth when you bite into paccheri full of sauce and juicy seafood. This pasta di trabocchi also has the distinctly Abruzzese touch of saffron (picked in the high plains of Navelli) to add complexity and depth to the sauce. And for me, saffron has a magical effect on the palate, creating the illusion of distant, mystic places. It’s a fitting flavor in a dish of the sea, and a symbol for those that travel the sea, the mariners of the Abruzzo coast.