MAITLAND, Fla. -- Your spouse is making pasta tonight. So you're probably expecting spaghetti, rigatoni, penne, or perhaps bowtie, right?

Bring on your Italian/Sicilian accent because -- get ready for it -- we're making sacchetti. It's not "sach-eh-tee" or "sack-eh-tie." It's "sah-KET-tee" -- sounded best when pronounced by Chef Francesco Aiello of Francesco's Ristorante in Maitland.

Aiello describes the dish as cheese-stuffed pasta purses.

"You make the homemade pasta," the chef said. "After you cut them into a little square -- and I can open up one (to demonstrate). You make a little bulb of cheese in the middle. You put some of the white of the eggs in your hands, take them like that, and it stays very, very close together."

The pasta pockets get sauced, too. We're talking everything from garlic and basil to tomatoes and pears. Pears, Aiello says, go incredibly well with cheese.

Hungry? Let's cook! 

Francesco's Sacchetti (or Fiocchetti Ripieni)

Fiocchetti is a pasta that is filled with six cheeses, and then bundled up into a little "lady's purse" of ricotta, Romano, Grana Padano, goat cheese, Asiago and Provolona.

Francesco's dish was created in the summer, with the ripe flavor of tomatoes at their peak and basil. This dish feeds four people. Make it with a fresh Caprese salad for a perfect pairing, or maybe a glass of white wine to finish this dish with the ripe flavors of Sicily. 

Ingredients:

  • 4 Qt pan of boiling salted water (salty like the sea)
  • 4 oz good olive oil, dark in color and fragrant 
  • 6 cloves of garlic, freshly sliced, not chopped 
  • Handful of halved cherry tomatoes
  • 2 oz of salted pasta water
  • 16 oz fiochetti (you can find theses frozen or fresh from your local market, if you can't find them get a nice tortellini) 
  • Handful of halved cherry tomatoes
  • Fresh basil
  • Handful of blue cheese
  • 1 pear sliced super thin

Instructions:

  • Heat the oil, then add in the garlic cloves, let them sizzle and start to brown, remove cloves. This is just to flavor the oil. 
  • Add in the cherry tomatoes, and let them blister a bit, but not brown. Add the pasta water, set aside off of the heat.
  • Add fioccetti pasta to the water, let boil for 3 minutes (they will start to float just a bit) 
  • Pull them out of the water with a strainer
  • Toss them into the pan that has the blistered tomatoes in it, add to medium high heat add a touch of olive oil, fresh basil to taste, and some more fresh cherry tomatoes. 
  • The finishing touch, a handful of crisp blue cheese and thin sliced pears.

Enjoy!