The Magnet 104: Little Hollows

How to make cavatelli: a simple fresh pasta

Cavatelli (+ in Italian) pasta is fun to make. Place a small bit of dough on a grooved wooden board, press with your thumb, and slide (see video below). The dough curls itself into a perfect shell shape. The process feels almost magical.

I learned how to make cavatelli at a recent pasta-making workshop in Los Angeles, where I went with Carla and my daughter. The dough has just two ingredients: water and coarsely ground semolina flour, kneaded by hand for about five minutes until the dough becomes glutinous and smooth.

Then you pinch off a golf ball-sized amount and roll it into a 1/2-inch diameter snake. Next, cut the snake into 1-inch long sections, which look like pillows. Then you slide the pillows down the board. Repeat until you've used up all your dough. It didn't take long to make enough pasta for two or three people — maybe twenty to thirty minutes. I imagine you'd get faster with practice.

Once made, you can either dry the cavatelli and keep them in a jar for later, store in the fridge for a few days, or you can be like us and drive home and cook them immediately. Drop them in boiling water, and after four or five minutes they'll begin to float. That means they are ready to eat. They were delicious with puttanesca sauce and lots of freshly grated parmesan.

Here’ a video of how to make them:

There were about 12 people in the class, and it was interesting to see how every person had a signature style of cavatelli. Like fingerprints, no two people's cavatelli looked quite the same. Carla's turned out small and tidy, almost machine-perfect, while mine were larger and more rustic with looser coils.

I don't know if there's a good reason to buy pasta in a box anymore because this is such an easy way to make it and the cleanup is minimal.