Cavatelli Pasta

Cavatelli pasta is a funny little caterpillar shaped noodle that is great with quick, fresh sauces. My son Mike gave me a cavetelli maker  for Christmas and I really enjoy the way it churns out these little gems. 

I made the cavatelli two ways, with cherry tomatoes and ricotta cheese and another dish made with hot Italian sausage and a browned butter sage sauce, both were were great tasting.

Cavatelli pasta recipe...  serves 4

1 cup flour

1/2 cup water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup ricotta cheese

Pile the flour right on your clean counter. Form a well in the flour, add the ricotta  then the water and salt. Carefully stir with a fork, slowly incorporating the flour a little at a time until the mixture is formed into a dough. If the mixture is too sticky to handle you may need additional flour. 

 

         Knead the dough until it is pliable and springs back when you press it with your finger. 

Form the dough into a rectangle one inch wide and a quarter inch thick, feed through the machine that is clamped to your kitchen counter or table. If you don't have a machine you can form the cavetelli by rolling into skinny ropes and cutting one inch long pieces, at this point you could use your fingers to press them into shape or use a flat tool to drag them into shape.  To make the pasta by hand roll the dough out into a flat disk cut a strip and roll it into a rope,  while you work with one, cover the rest with a clean, cloth kitchen towel...

Buying a cavatelli machine is probably the faster way to go... 

Cook the pasta until it is past the al dente point, these little guys should be soft enough to readily absorb the flavors of your sauce. I found that if they are cooked to al dente there are some that undercooked in the batch. At least in the batches I have made.

I made a quick sauce with cherry tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, ricotta cheese and fresh herbs. It was light and tasty. The cavatelli soak up the sauce and, of course, you'll want to add a bit of grated Pecorino Romano.  

 

The other dish I made was even better...

This recipe is from The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion and Cooking Manual, which is a book that I highly recommend. 

Cavatelli with Sausage and Sage Browned Butter

Ingredients:

1 pound hot Italian pork sausage (4 to 6 links depending on the size of the sausage)
7 tablespoons unsalted butter
8-10 sage leaves
freshly ground white pepper
ricotta cavatelli (double the recipe above)
1 cup grated Pecorino Romano
½ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, coarsely chopped

Directions:

Put a large pot of water on to boil and salt it well.

Meanwhile, put the sausage into your widest saute pan with ½ of water and turn the heat to medium. After 10 minutes, flip the sausages over and simmer the for another 5 minutes (replenish the water if it threatens to boil off). After 15 minutes, the sausages should be firm and cooked through. Remove the sausages to a cutting board (discard the water) and slice them into coins just shy of ½ inch. (You can do this an hour or even a day ahead of time if you like.)

Add 1 tablespoon of the butter to the pan and turn the heat to medium-high. After a minute, add the sausage coins in an even layer and let them cook, untouched, unstirred, unfussed with, until they’re deeply browned on the first side. (If there’s not enough room to brown all the sausage in one pan — which there will very probably not be — split it between two pans or brown it in two batches and use as additional tablespoon of butter.) Flip and brown them on the B side. The browning is integral to the ultimate depth of flavor of the finished dish — don’t stint on it. When the sausage is browned, remove it from the pan (a plate lined with paper towels is a nice place to hold it) and return the pan to the burner.

Keep the heat at medium-high and add the sage, the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter, and a few twists of white pepper. Stire the butter and scrape the browned bits on the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. After a minute or two, it should stop foaming and start to take on color. 

That’s when you should drop the ricotta cavatelli into the boiling water. Continue to cook the butter until it’s deeply browned and fragrant, about 4 minutes more, which should be just about how long the cavatelli takes to cook.

Do not drain the cavatelli too thoroughly. The water clinging to the pasta will give the sauce body. Add it to the butter sauce along with the sausage and stir.

Add the cheese, stir again, and portion the cavatelli among several serving plates. Scatter each with a couple of pinches of parsley. Serve immediately.

Mike gives the Cavetelli a taste test.

Papa al Pomodoro

Agriturismo IL GREPPO

Our Autumn 2010 trip to Italy was incredible. We spent two wonderful weeks in Rome, Venice, Florence and Tuscany. One of our favorite Tuscan experiences was a wine tasting at the Il Greppo winery.

 (We thought it was the Garden of Eden.)

The wine, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Il Greppo, was incredible, and the food was out of this world delicious.  The  first course, soup, was Papa e Pomodoro, Tomato and Bread Soup, a dish that I often serve my own family and guests.

True Italian cooking is simplicity at its essence. The ingredients for this dish are indeed simple: tomatoes, bread, chicken stock, olive oil, garlic, basil,  salt and pepper.

INGREDIENTS

 4 lbs. peeled and seeded plum tomatoes or 3-28oz cans

1/4 cup olive oil, plus a bit more to drizzle 

4 cloves garlic, chopped and mashed

3 or 4 slices Tuscan style bread

2 cups chicken stock

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
pinch of red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons fresh basil leaf chiffonade

Peel and seed 4 pounds of plum tomatoes, OR use 3-28ounce cans IMPORTED Italian Plum Tomatoes (whole, peeled). You will want to remove any basil that is packed with the canned tomatoes, remove any hard stems, and remove most of the seeds by cutting the tomatoes in half and squeezing out the seeds. You can then crush them by hand and they are ready for use. These imported tomatoes are really good, there is a difference. There are lots of brands out there, try to get a brand that comes from the San Marzano valley, in Campania, where my Grandpa Tony was born...  

Anyway, start by heating the garlic in the oil in a stock pot over medium heat. When the garlic is fragrant and lightly browned (about 3-5 minutes,) add tomatoes and red pepper flakes and cook gently, stirring occasionally, for another ten minutes. Add chicken stock, salt and pepper. Stir everything together and continue cooking another 5 minutes or so. Add the basil saving a few leaves for garnish.

Roughly shred the slices of bread and stir into the stock pot until the bread soaks up the tomato and stock. The bread will fall apart as you stir it and it will become a chunky sloppy soup. The soup is thick and hearty and should be served hot. Drizzle olive oil over the soup  and garnish with a few basil leaf shreds. You could also have a little grated Pecorino Romano on hand to add to the soup. (optional)

Papa al Pomodoro, delizioso!

 Mangiare e godere...

Home made German Pretzels

There was a recipe in the January Food & Wine magazine (p.57) for German style pretzels. This was in the "What to cook next" section of the magazine, although I find it hard to imagine the average home cook opting to cook with food grade lye, which this particular recipe calls for.

Yes, I am goofy enough to go ahead and order the lye from www.essentialdepot.com and try it out.  And, yes, the recipe turns out some flavorful, awesome pretzels. But you better be very careful because that lye is dangerous stuff.  The recipe is from chef Hans RÖckenwagner of Los Angeles.

Here is the recipe verbatem from Food &Wine:  

Ingredients
3 3/4 cups bread flour (20 ounces), plus more for dusting
1 1/2 cups warm water 1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
10 cups lukewarm water
1/2 cup food-grade lye micro beads 
Coarse salt or pretzel salt, for sprinkling

Directions
In the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the 3 3/4 cups of bread flour with the warm water, yeast, kosher salt and butter and knead at medium speed until the flour is evenly moistened, 2 minutes. Increase the speed to high and knead until a smooth, elastic dough forms around the hook, 8 minutes.
 

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface. Cover loosely with a dry kitchen towel and let rest for 5 minutes. Cut the dough into 8 equal pieces and form each one into a ball. Cover the dough balls with the towel and let rest for another 5 minutes. 

On an un-floured surface, roll each ball of dough into an 18-inch-long rope, tapering them slightly at both ends. To shape each pretzel, form the rope into a U shape. Cross the ends over each other twice to form the twist, then bring the ends to the bottom of the U and press the tips onto it. Arrange the pretzels on 2 large baking sheets lined with parchment paper and let stand uncovered in a warm place for 45 minutes, or until slightly risen. Refrigerate the pretzels uncovered for at least 2 hours or overnight. 

Preheat the oven to 400°. While wearing latex gloves, long sleeves and safety goggles, fill a large, deep ceramic, plastic or glass bowl with the lukewarm water. Carefully add the lye (always be sure to add lye to water, never the other way around) and, taking care not to splash, stir the solution occasionally until all the beads have fully dissolved, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spatula, gently lower a pretzel into the solution for 15 seconds. Carefully turn the pretzel over and soak it for another 15 seconds. With the spatula, remove the pretzel from the lye solution and return it to the baking sheets. 

Sprinkle the pretzels with coarse salt and bake on the top and middle racks of the oven until shiny-brown and risen, about 17 minutes; shift the pans halfway through baking. Let the pretzels cool slightly on the baking sheets before serving.

Pretzel buns

My first batch (uncooked and cooked, above) came out as pretzel "buns" which tasted great, but since they rise again after you form the shape, there was only a faint resemblance to a pretzel. I was after pretzels, not buns, so I made a second batch with skinnier dough ropes. The second batch worked nicely.

They are delicious, but their goodness only lasts a day or so, unless you freeze them unsalted and reheat in the oven at 275º for about 20 minutes, if you do this, moisten with a little water and salt them before reheating. 

If any of my local friends want to try this recipe, stop by our house for some lye, I have plenty left. 

Boy Scout Spaghetti Dinner...

We served 290+ people on Sunday at the annual fund raiser...  By my calculation we made about 10 gallons of marinara sauce. Of course there was a batch with hot Italian Sausage. My buddy Dan and I prepped on Saturday afternoon and served from 5:00pm until 8:00pm on Sunday. Here are some pics...

 Garlic...

...10 cloves in 3/4 cup of olive oil, per each #10 can of imported peeled Italian Plum Tomatoes,

 ...and 10 lb. chopped onion.

 This pot contains 4 #10 cans of Italian tomatoes.

 A number 10 can...

 Dan and the "prepped" tomatoes...

Tio with 80lbs. of pasta.  Note the red wine stain on the apron.

 Tio tends the marinara...

 Eddie is on the pasta, three turkey fryers do the trick.

 Anne enjoys a plate of pasta.

 All for a good cause,  Troop 17 Boy Scouts of Northfield.