The cleverest pastas tend to trick the eye and tease with wordplay. Are those postage stamps or francobolli? A plate of handkerchiefs or fazzoletti? Sorprese? Or surprise! It’s stuffed with nothing at all.
But no pasta shape is more visually convincing than caramelle, which closely resembles oblong candies in wrappers, with both ends twisted to contain the fillings. Fiorella’s cooks add another layer of wit to their current variation on the classic shape: Their caramelle are undeniably sweet (something that pasta often is not).
But the historic Italian Market butcher shop-turned-pasta bar isn’t sugaring its pasta. The caramelle’s sweetness comes naturally from late-summer corn simmered in butter and funked up with huitlacoche and black summer truffles.
“Huitlacoche is known colloquially as the poor man’s truffle,” said chef Matt Rodrigue, who loved the duality of uniting it with conventionally expensive black truffle — and with the fungus’ host.
“Pairing huitlacoche [corn smut] with corn isn’t reinventing the wheel but, again, it was simple. They grow together. It’s one of the few fungal infections that happen on a farm where the farmer is, well, not upset because of how much it can sell for,” he said.
It’s unlikely you’d fly to Italy and get a plate of caramelle pasta made with huitlacoche, but it’s an essential ingredient in Mexican cuisine — and in Philly’s Italian Market, which now contains far more Mexican businesses than its namesake suggests.
By cooking with locally available ingredients, Rodrigue is, in essence, hewing to Italian tradition and simplicity in his approach to making pasta, even if he’s not always sticking to ingredients from Italy.
Fiorella Pasta, 817 Christian St., Philadelphia, on Dec. 27, 2025.Michael Klein / Staff
“Simple is hard. It’s difficult to be restrained and to work within confines,” Rodrigue said. “But rules help you develop a vision.”
And so his caramelle filling is simply corn, huitlacoche, butter, and onion simmered together, pureed until silken, then twisted up into pasta. The candy-shaped batons are cooked, then dressed with pasta water that’s emulsified with chives by vigorously tossing the caramelle in the pan. The dish is finished with a snowdrift of Parmigiano Reggiano and black truffle shavings. The result is a marriage of cultures, aromatic funk from two different sources, and the last breath of the season’s corn.
“People pay for things. For truffles, for certain mushrooms. And I felt corn should be in that category and an all-star. Corn is perfect. It just needs butter and salt and you’re good to go,” said Rodrigue.
And Fiorella’s caramelle is a perfect salute to corn and its smut. But also, of course, butter.
I am a former chef and restaurateur. I write stories about food, chefs, and restaurants, and examine the systems and structures behind them.
