If you don't know what fregula is, you can take a trip to Sardinia and enjoy one of its typical dishes: fregula with seafood. Today we will prepare it in the winter vegetarian version with an excellent cauliflower.
Fregola or fregula is made with durum wheat (Triticum durum) not whole wheat and are irregular balls with a diameter ranging between 2 and 6 millimeters. At first glance it could be mistaken for the vaguely Middle Eastern bulgur or for the typical couscous of North Africa (not to forget the very famous festival in Sicily). The difference is in the size and above all in the cooking method, if the couscous is steamed the fregula is cooked like pasta or risotto.
Its traditions are ancient, and the name comes from the Latin ferculum, which means crumb. The first written testimony is found in the Statute of the Millers of Tempio Pausania of the 14th century, which regulated its preparation. The peculiarity was that fregula had to be prepared only from Monday to Friday, to be able to allocate the water on Saturday and Sunday to the fields.
Fregula can also be made at home, in fact it is produced by "rolling" durum wheat flour in a large earthenware basin and then toasted in the oven.
Recipe for fregula or fregula with cauliflower, brie and walnuts
In this recipe we will cook fregula using it as if it were a risotto.
We start with the vegetables by cleaning and dividing a cauliflower into florets that we boil in salted boiling water. Then we drain it and make it into a cream with an immersion blender and oil.
We start cooking the fregula by toasting it in a pan with oil, when it heats up we start adding broth as if we were making a risotto. At ¾ of cooking we add the cauliflower cream and continue cooking.
When the fregula is cooked, turn off the heat and stir in some Brie then add some coarsely chopped walnut kernels. Mix gently and serve, grinding Jamaican pepper at the time. In the glass we will pour a Franciacorta bubbles that cleanses the mouth but, above all, immediately makes you happy.
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