Millefanti (or triddhi, as they are called in Salento), are a type of egg pasta to be cooked in broth during the winter.
They are made by roughly mixing semolina, eggs, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and parsley and then rubbing your hands against each other to make small grains. It is a very ancient pasta, traces of which can be found as early as medieval documents. The name is supposed to come from the Greek word “mylefatos,” which means ground with stone.

The Salento version of the name “triddhi” is very close to the Arabic “itrya,” the dry pasta mentioned in the 12th century by geographer Muhammad al-Idrīsī.

I like to think of triddhi as an Apulian version of “instant noodles”-they are really quick to prepare and to dip into the boiling broth. The best way to warm up a cold winter evening.

Here’s how to prepare them.

Ingredients for 6-8 persons

300 g durum wheat flour
3 eggs
4 tablespoons Parmigiano cheese
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 l of vegetable broth

Time: 15 minutes

Let’s cook!

Place the durum wheat on the pasta board, making a crater and pour in it the beaten eggs, Parmigiano cheese and finely chopped parsley.
Coarsely mix the ingredients, forming the pasta by rubbing your hands together into irregularly shaped granules of dough, about the size of a grain of rice or slightly more.

You can cook them right away, in vegetable broth for about ten minutes or let them rest for an hour on the pasta board (in this case they will take longer to cook).
Serve them hot with plenty of grated Parmigiano cheese.

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