FOOD ON THE FOOD

How to Make Cappelletti (and Tortellini)

I’ve been making a lot of Nonni’s traditional recipes lately.  This weekend, I sat myself down and made cappelletti, the little hat-shaped tortellini from the Marche region of Italy where that part of my family is from.  Since cappelletti in chicken broth (cappelletti en brodo) are a Christmas tradition, I thought this would be a good time to fill the freezer and update the original recipe I posted a few years ago.

Cappelletti are little bite-sized pasta dumplings filled with pork and Parmesan cheese (though regional versions vary).  Traditionally, they are served in chicken soup rather than with sauce.  However, tradition doesn’t have to trump imagination all the time.  You can sauce them and fill them with all sorts of things.  You can make them large, like ravioli, and stuff them with a roasted pumpkin puree and serve them with browned butter and sage.  You can fill them with ricotta and garlicky mustard greens and top them with red sauce.  Or, you could fashion some kind of celery root filling and dress them with a mushroom cream sauce.  Like, perhaps, in the spring when your mushroom logs sprout their first flush!  Or in the late summer/fall when the hen-of-the-woods come out.  I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud.  Or maybe you could fill them with the mushrooms themselves!  My point is cappelletti are versatile and delicious. 

As far as I can tell, the only difference between cappelletti and tortellini (if there’s any at all) is that tortellini tend to have more pronounced holes in the middle and the corners point up like crowns.  On the other hand, cappelletti (which means “little hats” in Italian) have almost no holes and the brims of the hats are low like peasant caps.  They’re both made basically the same way.  Here’s the technique:

Mix up the dough, knead it, and roll it out into thin sheets with a pasta machine.  (The recipe goes into more detail on this part.)

Cut dough into 2-inch squares with a pizza cutter or floured paring knife.  They don’t have to be perfect. 

Place ½ teaspoon of filling in the center. 

Fold the dough over the filling triangularly, corner to corner, and seal (you may need to wet a finger in water and run it along the bottom edge of the dough to get it to stick together). 

Then bring the two pointy corners on the folded side together, pressing one end on top of the other to seal.  For tortellini, you wrap those two ends around a finger before sealing so it retains more of a ring shape (the remaining corner tends to flip up in the process).  That’s it! 

But doesn’t it get tiresome after you've made the first eight dozen?  You bet.  At that point, though, it becomes almost therapeutically mindless.  It’s a good way to pass a rainy (or snowy) afternoon while the soup is bubbling away.  Kids love to play with the pasta machine.  It’s also a fun (and cheap) date-night activity if you’re lame.  You get 12-15 single meals out of it, which then take all of five minutes to cook right out of the freezer during the week.  Plus, you can really stretch a pound of meat that way!

Nonni used to make cappelletti by hand one thousand at a time.  I’m not exaggerating.  Me, I made a measly 150 in as many minutes.  I figure she had an extra 50 years to get better at it, though.  If you’re new to pasta-making, here’s a great tutorial.  Everyone should try it once.  It’s play dough for adults.  If you don’t have a pasta machine, just ask a neighbor.  People have all kinds of stuff they never use!

Have fun!

Cappelletti

You’ll need some good chicken soup to serve these in.  Best to make it ahead of time.  Nonni’s version is here.  You can also make the filling ahead of time and refrigerate it.  It’s actually easier to handle chilled.  If you find yourself with a little extra pasta dough left over, roll it out, cut it into ribbons slightly thinner than ½-inch, and freeze them for future fettuccine.  If you have leftover filling, which I doubt you will, make an omelet.

Filling:
1½ Tbsp. olive oil
1 lb. ground pork
½ cup breadcrumbs
¾ c. freshly grated Parmesan cheese (the real stuff—NOT from a canister)
1 egg
Pinch nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Dough:
3 cups flour
5 eggs
1/8 tsp. salt

For the filling, heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Brown pork until cooked through.  Remove from heat and let cool for a minute or two.  Mix in breadcrumbs, cheese, egg, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.  Mixture should be thick enough to hold together.  If too wet, add more breadcrumbs and/or cheese.  Let cool in refrigerator while making dough.

On a board or in a large bowl, add flour and make a well in the middle.  Crack eggs into the center and beat with a fork, gradually scraping in the flour from the perimeter to incorporate.  When it gets too thick to stir, turn out onto floured board and knead.  Depending on the flour, your eggs, and the humidity, you may not need all the flour, or you may need more.  Wash and dry your hands so the dough doesn’t stick.  Knead 10-15 minutes.   Put in a lightly oiled bowl and cover to keep from drying out.  Let rest for a half hour.

Set up a pasta machine with rollers open to the widest setting.  Cut dough into 8 equal pieces and keep covered.  Flour the rollers of the pasta machine.  Take one piece of pasta, flatten it with your hands, and run it through the machine at its widest setting (1 on the side knob of my Imperia).  Fold dough into thirds to make a square-ish shape and run it through again.  Repeat several times (this reactivates the gluten to give the dough more stiffness).  Decrease the space between the rollers by one and run the pasta through one time.  From now on, don’t fold.  Continue decreasing the space between rollers and running the dough through once until you reach the thinnest setting (6 on my machine) or the pasta is so thin, you can almost see your fingers through it.

Working quickly, place rolled-out pasta on lightly floured surface and cut into 2-inch squares using a pizza cutter or sharp knife.  Place ½ teaspoon of filling in the center of a square and fold into a triangle, corner to corner, pressing on the edges to seal (moisten edges with a finger dipped in water if they don’t adhere).  Bring the two pointy corners toward each other, overlapping slightly, and press to join.  They should sit flat like the little hats they are.  Lay them in a single layer on a rimmed, floured cookie sheet and cover with plastic wrap while filling the rest of the pasta squares.  Repeat until all the pasta is used.  Freeze the pans of completed cappelletti as soon as they are filled.  Once the pasta is frozen, you can transfer them to plastic freezer bags.  Makes 125-150.

To serve, bring chicken soup to a boil.  Add frozen cappelletti (don’t defrost them).  Let soup come back up to a boil, then turn down heat to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally.  Cook until al dente, about 5 minutes.  Serving size is about 10 cappelletti, though my dad would heartily, heartily disagree with that figure.

Simple End-of-Summer Pasta

We were lucky to have been invited by friends to their family lake house in New York at the tail end of summer vacation.  Located in the foothills between the Catskills and the Poconos, it’s a really cool old house with porches and a fireplace and bats in the attic, and you walk right out the back door onto a dock overlooking a beautiful spring-fed lake.

A total media blackout was enacted for the entire stay.  Fishing poles replaced TV, computer games were traded for a kayak, and nature walks were conducted rain or shine.  Six kids under age 8 shared beds and sleeping bags while Husband and I slept in a tent on the porch.  After the first chilly night, I stole all the blankets off of everyone else’s bed and stacked them up in the tent like The Princess and the Pea, wherein I played the role of both princess and pea.  Books were read and many bowls of ice cream were consumed.  Contentious Scrabble games, inflamed by questionable scorekeeping, were eventually tempered by wine and exhaustion.

All three couples brought our CSA shares from Waltham Fields and Lindentree Farm, and we somehow managed to consume all 19 pounds of tomatoes by way of pasta sauce, ratatouille, gazpacho, BLTs, salads, and countless tomato sandwiches of toasted Italian bread, warm mayo, slabs of ripe heirlooms, salt, pepper, and nothing more.  But here’s the other dish that made us swoon: Angel hair pasta tossed with raw cherry tomatoes macerated in a garlic and basil slurry.  It’s a lake house tradition that I daresay should extend beyond the lake.  Not only is it virtually no effort at all, but it’s a great way to enjoy the last of the season’s sungolds.

 

Angel Hair Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic, and Basil

So good you could even skip the cheese!

1 lb. angel hair pasta
4 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
¼ cup fresh basil, chopped
Red pepper flakes to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Marinate tomatoes in olive oil, garlic, basil, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper for 4-6 hours.  Boil angel hair in salted water until al dente.  Drain, then toss with tomato mixture and as much Parmesan as desired.

Source: Adapted from The New York Times and Jean Halberstam of Nantucket.

Cookbook Friday: Cappellettis

This is my grandmother, Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe, beaming with what must be her first child, Margaret Ann, in 1942.  The U.S. had been at war with Japan and Germany since the bombing of Pearl Harbor the year before.

Cappellettis are among the top three all-time favorite family recipes, along with crescia and passatellis.  Pronounced “cop-LETS” in the dialect Nonni spoke, these are meat-filled tortellini shaped like little hats (that’s what the name means in Italian) and served in chicken soup.

Nonni still makes these filled pastas by the thousands, despite the rheumatoid arthritis that has permanently bent her fingers.  She freezes them in big bags and sends them home with me (if I play my cards right) or my dad (if I don’t) along with containers of homemade soup.  Her youngest son, Eddie, now in his fifties, has a standing order for shipments of cappellettis and crescia to be sent to him from Connecticut to Washington State several times a year.  Although the prognosis for pork traveling through the U.S. postal system is grim at best, he still lives to tell a happy tale.

 

Cappellettis

I recently revised this recipe (12/10) to make half the filling and double the pasta so you end up with about the right amount of each.  That recipe can be found here.

For the filling:
3 Tbsp. oil
2 lb. ground lean pork
½ cup breadcrumbs
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (or more)
2 eggs
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and black pepper to taste

For the dough:
2 cups flour
1 egg (sometimes 2)

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Brown pork until cooked through.  Remove pan from heat and mix in breadcrumbs, cheese, eggs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.  Mixture should be thick enough to hold together.  If too wet, add more breadcrumbs and/or cheese.  Let cool while making dough.

In a large bowl, add flour and make a well in the middle.  Crack egg in the center and stir with a fork, gradually scraping in the flour from the perimeter to incorporate.  When it gets too thick to stir, turn out onto flour board and knead, adding more flour if necessary. Roll into a cylinder and cut into 2-inch pieces.  Put in a lightly oiled bowl and cover to keep from drying out.

Set up pasta machine with rollers open to the widest setting.  Run one piece of pasta through the machine.  Decrease the number by one and run the pasta through again.  Continue decreasing the space between rollers until the pasta is so thin, you can almost see your fingers through it.

Working quickly, place rolled-out pasta on lightly floured surface and cut into 1½-inch squares using a sharp knife.  Place one teaspoon of filling in the center of a square and fold into a triangle, corner to corner, pressing on the edges to seal.  Bring the two pointy corners toward each other, overlapping slightly, and press to join.  They should sit flat like the little hats they are.  Lay them in a single layer on a rimmed cookie sheet and cover while filling the rest of the pasta squares.  Repeat until all the pasta is used, freezing the pans of completed cappellettis as soon as they are filled.  Once the pasta has frozen, you can transfer them to plastic freezer bags.  Any remaining filling can be stored in the freezer for future use.

To serve, bring homemade chicken soup to a boil.  Add frozen cappellettis (don’t defrost them), stirring occasionally.  Let soup come back up to a boil, then turn down heat to a gentle simmer.  Cook until al dente (fully cooked but still firm) about 7 minutes. 

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 –

Nonni's freshly made cappellettis.  Photo by Trish Barker.

Next Recipe: Italian Pie Crust

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Cookbook Friday: Clam Sauce

The last of my grandmother’s wedding photos, this is her sister-in-law, Rose [Donroe] Valentino, in 1940.  Rose learned how to cook from her Neapolitan mother, Margarite Donroe.  She refers to this recipe as white clam sauce, to differentiate it from the tomato-based red version.  Rose still lives in the New Haven area and is very spry at age 95.

 

White Clam Sauce

An old standard Christmas Eve recipe, Rose would use fresh cherrystone clams and serve them in their shells for a more festive presentation.  This everyday version uses canned clams from the pantry.

3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
4 medium garlic cloves, minced
Pinch of red pepper flakes
2 small bottles of clam juice (8 fl. oz. each)
3 Tbsp. fresh parsley, minced
2 cans minced clams, drained (6 ½ oz. each)
Salt to taste
1 lb. angel hair pasta

Set a large pot of salted water to boil.  Meanwhile, heat oil and sauté garlic until light brown (careful, as garlic burns fast).  Add red pepper flakes, clam juice, and parsley.  Cook for 15 minutes.  Just before serving, add canned clams and let simmer together for 1 minute. 

Cook angel hair pasta as directed.  Before draining, save ¼ cup of the pasta water.  Put pasta in bowl, add part of the clam sauce along with the reserved pasta water.  Serve topped with additional clam sauce.  Serves 8.

Rose [Donroe] Valentino
North Haven, Connecticut
1911 –

 

Next Recipe: Crescia

     (Previous Recipe: Fried Artichokes)

Cookbook Friday: Passatellis

A park in New Haven circa 1941.  From left, Dora Barbaresi (my grandmother), pregnant sister Jean [Barbaresi] Borrelli, mother Lydia Barbaresi, and sister Edith [Barbaresi] Piccolo.  Lydia died when I was a baby, but I do remember my Auntie Jean and Aunt Edith (both great-aunts to me).  I thought Jean was very nice, but Edith scared the hell out of me!

What, you’ve never heard of passatellis?  Neither has anyone else.  Nonni pronounces it “passa-TAYS.”  It’s a tubular pasta made from breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese that is served in chicken soup.  This is another old recipe from the 1800's, passed down from the Polverari/Belbusti families of Castelvecchio in the Marches region.  It evolved as an ingenious way of using up stale bread. 

Growing up in the 1980's, I got used to the inevitable blank stares I'd receive when describing the Italian food that Nonni cooked for us.  Sauceless pasta?  In soup?  It was as if I were Laotian trying to pass myself off as Italian.  But, what of lasagna, manicotti, and ziti, they would inquire at recess?  Well, Nonni made those, too, I clarified, but the pasta we hold most dear comes in soup.  Then, they would beat me up.

Only a small handful of people in our family know how to make passatellis.  Nonni freezes and bags them in big batches, but only the lucky ones get to bring them home!

Passatellis

I’m not sure how they shape them in Italy, but Nonni uses a meat grinder to extrude the noodles.  You could also use the meat grinding attachment on your stand mixer.

4 cups plain breadcrumbs
3 cups Parmesan cheese
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch of lemon zest
8 large eggs

In a large bowl or pot, mix breadcrumbs with cheese, nutmeg, and zest.  Add eggs and mix thoroughly until cohesive dough forms.  Make into small balls (about 2 inches in diameter) and set aside in a covered bowl. 

One by one, put balls through a meat grinder to form thick strands.  Cut strings to about 4- to 6-inch lengths and lay them out on the table to dry for several hours before cooking.  To freeze, let them dry overnight before storing. 

Serve in Nonni’s chicken soup.  To cook, bring soup to a boil and add fresh or frozen strands (no need to defrost).  Cook until done, about 3 minutes.

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 -

Nonni’s homemade passatellis.  Photo by Trish Barker.

Next Recipe: Tomato Sauce

     (Previous Recipe: Chicken Soup)