We started watching Ciao House this week. The culinary area of this competition* is Puglia, Italy. We have spent a lot of our visits to Italy in Puglia and watching the show made us want to prepare an Apulian dish. One of their iconic dishes is orecchiette with broccoli rabe. Sometimes sausage is included. Since we wanted to keep this vegetarian (vegan if you use non-dairy cheese or omit the cheese), we made ours with mushrooms and substituted kale for the broccoli rabe since that is what we had on hand.

Our orecchiette took a long time to cook (15 minutes) since it was quite thick. We used a whole grain Italian brand called Manta that we bought through Amazon. Next time we will just get Barilla. Anyway, between the time we had getting the salted water boiling and then the 15 minutes cooking we had ample time to make a sauce.

First in olive oil I sautéed the mushrooms and then added chopped onion, then garlic and red pepper flakes. When the pasta was nearly done I added the kale and some pasta water to the mushrooms etc. Finally we drained the pasta and added it to the pan of vegetables with more pasta water and additional olive oil. Very enjoyable!

*Last year when we watched season 1 of Ciao House the less talented chefs got together and voted off the better chefs. So it really was not much of a competition. It was more like a culinary manipulation. We were not sure that we would even watch it again but since they would be showcasing Puglia and Apulian food we are giving the show a second try. Hopefully the chefs will be less manipulative this season.