Tagliolini with butter and sage: the thin sfoglia recipe

Tagliolini al burro e salvia are the dish for evenings when the sfoglia, the sheet of egg pasta, is already made and there is no time for ragù. They are also the dish of celebrations, when a truffle comes into the house and you need something that will not cover it. A sheet as thin as a veil, butter taken to the colour of a hazelnut, sage that fries for a second and Parmigiano: ten minutes, if the pasta is ready, and everyone is at the table.

Here is our version: three eggs and three hundred grams of flour, cut at 2 to 3 millimetres and butter treated with respect. It is a simple recipe, but simplicity in the kitchen forgives nothing.

Why the tagliolino wants a thinner sheet

Tagliatelle are rolled to about a millimetre, tagliolini to no more than 0.7 mm. This is not fussiness. A ribbon 8 millimetres wide and a millimetre thick has a cross section that carries a thick ragù; a 2 millimetre ribbon of the same thickness would become a square spaghetto, hard and out of proportion. The house rule is that width and thickness go together: the narrower you cut, the thinner you must roll. All the measurements are in the guide to pasta thickness by shape.

There is a question of taste too. A thin tagliolino cooks in a minute and stays soft, almost silky, and the butter coats every strand. A finer sheet also has more surface for its weight, so it takes up more dressing with less fat. To roll it without tearing you need a rested dough and a long pin: the guide on rolling pasta by hand explains the gestures one by one.

The browned butter

Melted butter is one thing; browned butter is another. Heated over a medium flame, butter first foams, which is the water evaporating, then the foam subsides and the milk proteins on the bottom begin to toast. That is where the smell of hazelnut and biscuit is born. The sage goes in at that moment, for a few seconds: it turns crisp and gives up its oil. A moment later the heat goes off, because there are ten seconds between nutty and burnt.

The version in broth

Before the butter there was broth. Tagliolini in capon broth were one of the typical first courses of the tradition, or the dish for anyone who was unwell and needed something warm and light. They are cooked straight in the broth, for a minute, and served with Parmesan. With passatelli they make up the pair of Sunday soups of Romagna.

How to serve them

In a warm deep plate, with the butter bound to the pasta by a small ladle of cooking water. The Parmigiano goes in off the heat, or it turns stringy. If there is truffle, it is shaved over at the last moment, in fine slices, and nobody speaks for a good minute.