Why does it work?
- Twice-milled semolina flour easily absorbs water to form an elastic, easy-to-knead pasta dough.
- Resting the prepared dough briefly before shaping gives the gluten time to relax to ensure easy pasta making.
When people think of making fresh pasta at home, they often think of flour flying around the kitchen, sticky balls of egg dough stuck to countertops and glued to fingers, and hours of running the pasta machine, slowly wrestling the dough until it’s paper-thin. But there’s a whole other type of pasta making that doesn’t involve any rolling or even any eggs. Welcome to the world of southern Italian pasta, and one of my personal favorites: cavatelli.
Unlike egg pasta, which is often delicate and soft, cavatelli—which translates to “little hollows”—is rustic, chewy, and ridiculously satisfying. Making hollow, block-like pasta is remarkably fun. You need little more than your hands. Unlike shapes like fettuccine, pappardelle, and farfalle, which are made by rolling dough into thin sheets and cutting out shapes, cavatelli are shaped by hand from small pieces of elastic, watery dough. Once the dough is mixed and kneaded, it is rolled into ropes by hand, cut into small strips, and finally pressed and rolled on the counter or on a hand-hewn pasta board to create short, thick, chewy noodles.
I learned to make fresh cavatelli, all kinds of southern Italian pasta, when I lived in the small town of Conversano in Puglia. There I worked full-time at a Michelin-starred restaurant, where I learned and mastered the craft of making fresh pasta from my co-workers and fellow chefs. Since I was a culinary student and chef in Italy, my love for fresh pasta has only grown, and I now have my own pasta business, where I sell packaged portions of several fresh pasta varieties at farmers markets on Martha’s Vineyard, where I live. As a pasta lover who lives and breathes it, I’ve learned a lot about making homemade cavatelli. Here are some ideas on how to make great fresh cavatelli at home.
Suitable flour for cavatelli
As with the majority of southern Italian pasta, cavatelli dough is made from semolina flour and water, sometimes with a very small addition of olive oil. With so few ingredients, the quality and type of flour you use is vital to ensuring delicious pasta. You want to look for twice-milled semolina flour (also called “remacinata”). Remasinata semolina is finely ground durum wheat with a high protein content, light yellow color, and a smooth texture that absorbs water easily. It is perfect for kneading into pasta dough and creating soft and structured noodles.
Double-milled flour is key because you want to grind the grains well to ensure the dough is silky and not grainy. You can buy rimacinata semolina such as the Caputo brand in specialty markets and online. I always look for semolina from Puglia, but that’s a personal preference. Don’t try to replace all-purpose flour with twice-milled semolina flour in a recipe. The resulting dough will be tough and have a glue-like texture.
Different styles of cavatelli
Cavatelli has its origins in the Molise and Puglia regions of Italy, but this type of pasta has deep roots throughout southern Italy, with subtle regional differences. The women I learned from in Puglia showed me how to smoothly shape cavatelli. Each lump of dough was shaped on their wooden tables with just their thumbs, pressing and pulling the dough until it curled in on itself, forming a shell-like “little cavity.” The other style of cavatelli is chiseled or “rigati” and is shaped using specialized pasta sheets or manual pasta making machines.
Tools you will need to form cavatelli
Soft cavatelli are the easiest to shape and do not require any special equipment. You can simply use a butter knife or even just your thumb to scrape the dough onto a flat surface to give it a hollow, curly shape, and I’ve included these directions in my recipe below.
However, I prefer to make cavatelli with ridges because I like the way the pasta sauce sticks to the corners. There are many different pasta tools that can be used to shape cavatelli with ridges, but I have found that a simple gnocchi plate is the best. Portable gnocchi bars are fairly affordable and available in many Italian grocery stores or online. Other specialty pasta boards, such as garganelli or malloredos, will also work. Or, if you’re interested in an artistic experience, look for Cafarolo’s artisan boards made from different types of wood with many different engraved designs. As you press and roll the dough onto the board, the design will imprint on the pasta.
Another option for shaping cavatelli is a crank-driven cavatelli machine. With this mini pasta maker, you place a hand-rolled rope of dough between the two rollers and move the handle while the machine cuts and shapes the pasta. It’s a very fun tool to use, and if you expect to make cavatelli frequently at home, I encourage you to consider purchasing one.
What sauce should be served with cavatelli?
Now let’s talk about what kind of sauce goes well with the handcrafted cavatelli that you took the time to lovingly make. Whether filled or smooth, cavatelli are a great carrier for sauce. The indentation in the inner cavity, whether formed with your thumb or rolled into tight overlapping folds, catches and stores the sauce well. If you shape it “rigati” style by rolling the dough onto a tight board, you’ll get more sauce in each bite because it will stick to the inside of the edges.
The general rule when pairing pasta with sauce is that you have to pay attention to how the mixture travels from the bowl to the mouth. For example, a long pasta like pappardelle wraps around on your fork, moving like a little nest. For this, you would want a thick sauce that sticks well and has ingredients (think slow-cooked ragu with shredded meat) that get stuck in the swirl and reach your mouth along with the pasta. But for short, rustic, dumpling-like pasta shapes like cavatelli, we may use a spoon instead of a fork. We want a more fluid sauce that can gather on the spoon and work into the little cavities of each pasta.
Fresh tomatoes, slow-cooked tomato sauce, or even ragu are great options, and I’ve listed them below. You can also add tender pieces of cooked seasonal vegetables, such as green beans, or shavings of salty cheese such as ricotta salad to the finished dish. Ultimately, you want a sauce that reflects the pure simplicity of handmade cavatelli. Use good ingredients and it’s hard to go wrong.