Spaghetti alla Chitarra con Pallottine

Abruzzo sits in the middle of Italy, neither truly north nor south, and its cooking reflects this stubborn independence. The pasta is fresh, made with eggs as in Emilia-Romagna, but it is cut through a wooden frame strung with fine wires, like a musical instrument. La chitarra, the guitar. The wires produce square-shaped spaghetti with edges that catch sauce better than any round strand ever could.

The pallottine are the point of this dish. They must be small, genuinely small, no bigger than a marble or a cherry. Americans make meatballs the size of tennis balls. Italians in Teramo make them tiny so that every forkful of pasta includes one or two, perfectly proportioned. You fry them first in olive oil until golden and crisp on all sides, then you let them finish in the tomato sauce. The sauce absorbs their flavor while they absorb the sauce.

Every grandmother in Teramo has her own recipe. Some add a scrape of nutmeg. Some use only beef. Some insist on pecorino rather than Parmigiano. All of them agree that the meatballs must be small enough to eat in one bite. This is not negotiable.