Perfect with a Trapanese pesto, Sicilian-style eggplant, fresh tomato sauce with ricotta salata, grilled fish, or a vegetable ragù: the twisted, open shape of casarecce was designed for one thing—to trap sauce in its hollow and deliver it with every bite.

You can recognize casarecce by their small strip of dough rolled onto itself in an S-shape, with a groove running along their entire length. Bronze-drawn, they retain all the firmness of durum wheat on the tooth.

From the very first bite, something happens in your mind before you’ve even finished chewing. Your brain recognizes that flavor of golden wheat—simple, warm, slightly sweet on the finish—and it doesn’t try to analyze it: it feels it. First, a sense of calm, like stepping into a kitchen where someone was waiting for you. Then, a quiet joy, the kind found at a large table in Italy where no one watches the clock and every piece of casarecce holds a little bit of sauce in the hollow of its twist. And deep down, that sweet nostalgia for a Sunday you think you’ve already lived, even if you never have. The flavor lingers on the palate, and the emotion even longer.

The name comes from casareccia, meaning "homemade." In Sicily, these little noodles were once rolled by hand, a strip of dough wrapped around a thin rod, for Sunday meals. Since then, they have become a shape loved far beyond the island, recognizable among a thousand by their twist.

Pasta Alica has been upholding this same craftsmanship since the 1920s in Laurenzana, in the province of Potenza. It all began with Grandma Anna, helped by two of her thirteen sons, Rocco and Francesco, who opened a small grocery store for local farmers. In 1928, this shop became the Michele Crisci wholesale house, one of the most important in Southern Italy, and that same family passion still guides Pasta Alica today.

It all starts with the finest Italian durum wheat, grown in the fertile lands of Basilicata and the Tavoliere delle Puglie. The grains are slowly ground into a fine semolina, then worked with pure Lucanian water at a temperature that never exceeds 25 °C, to preserve the wheat's natural proteins. The dough is bronze-extruded, giving each piece of casarecce a slightly rough surface designed to hold sauce. It is then dried slowly for nearly two days, between 36 °C and 40 °C, to maintain its amber color and perfect al dente texture.

You don’t buy casarecce for an ordinary meal. You buy them for that moment when the sauce slips into every twist, when every bite tastes like a Sunday in Italy, when the house smells wonderful and no one wants it to end.

And somewhere in Canada, on a weeknight that is slipping by too fast, someone drains these casarecce and closes their eyes for a second. For the time it takes to eat a plate, they are somewhere else—in Basilicata, where this tradition has never changed.

Why our customers love them:

• 🇮🇹 Made in Italy, in Basilicata
• 🌾 100% Italian durum wheat, grown in Basilicata and the Tavoliere delle Puglie
• ⚙️ Bronze-extruded for a rough surface that holds sauce
• 🌡️ Slow-dried for nearly 48 hours, between 36 °C and 40 °C
• 💧 Worked with Lucanian water at less than 25 °C
• 🍝 Twisted and open shape, ideal for pesto, vegetable sauces, fish, or fresh tomato sauces
• 👵 Italian family heritage passed down since the 1920s