Maccheroncini di Campofilone

Campofilone is a village so small you could miss it if you blinked while driving through the Marche hills. Yet this place, perched above the Adriatic, has been making the most extraordinary egg pasta in Italy for six hundred years. The women of Campofilone roll their dough thinner than anywhere else, cut it finer than anywhere else, and use more eggs than anyone would think reasonable. Ten eggs for every kilogram of flour. The result is pasta so delicate it cooks in thirty seconds, so rich it needs only the simplest treatment.

The traditional sauce is not what Americans expect. It is ragù di rigaglie, a slow-simmered sauce of chicken giblets: hearts, livers, gizzards. This is peasant wisdom at its most sophisticated. What the wealthy discarded, the poor transformed into something profound. The giblets give depth and complexity that no chicken breast could approach.

This is not easy. The pasta must be rolled until it is nearly transparent, then cut into strands so fine they tangle like threads of gold. If you cannot achieve this thinness, you are not making maccheroncini di Campofilone. You are making something else. But if you take the time, if you develop the feel, you will understand why this village earned Italy's first IGP designation for egg pasta.