Italians often tell me that pasta dishes are first and foremost about the pasta, but there are dishes where I beg to differ. One of those recipes is stroncatura, which means “scraps.” Originally made with leftover flour—whole wheat, rye and sometimes carob flour—the pasta itself is full-flavored and requires a powerful sauce for pairing.

I tasted this dish at Al Girone dei Golosi in Cosenza, Calabria, after asking the chef, Andrea Roberto, to bring out his favorite local dishes. In addition to anchovies, the dish calls for cherry tomatoes, black olives and fragrant breadcrumbs. Some versions also use fish sauce, but for our purposes, a modest amount of anchovies was sufficient. (Fish sauce, or colatura, is made locally in the town of Cetara.)

Two issues were immediately apparent. I preferred regular semolina pasta over whole wheat, producing a cleaner, more modern version. Now that we had a less flavorful pasta, we cut back on the anchovies for balance—the other ingredients (tomatoes, garlic, olives and breadcrumbs) were going to do more of the heavy lifting. One might call this “stroncatura light,” although Roberto might well use stronger language!

The final touch was the breadcrumbs—torn country bread, garlic, parsley and oil were whizzed in a food processor and then toasted briefly in a skillet. Per usual, smashed garlic cloves were used to flavor the sauce and then removed. The slightly undercooked pasta was then added to the sauce with a half cup of the cooking water to meld the sauce to the pasta.

If you do want to try a more authentic version, use whole-wheat pasta and, if you like, double the anchovies. Either way, it’s another example of the power and brilliance of cucina povera.

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."