Chef Frank makes Cavatelli

i'm chef frank this is protocooks and today we're making handmade cavitelli i don't ever remember seeing my grandmother make cavitelli uh or pasta for that matter you know mostly she used dried pasta but i have this uh family heirloom here and i'm gonna show it to you and this is basically a pasta board right it fits on the counter it's kind of like my cutting board but it has a little lip so that you can knead the dough on it and my great-grandfather made this and my great-grandmother and my grandmother would sit across from each other you can kind of see there's like two spots you can see where it's a little worn out where they would scrape the knives against the pasta dough and form the shapes of pasta it's one of my treasured heirlooms it was in my parents attic for years and when they sold their house i said i want that so uh there is pasta making in my family i just don't remember it i was probably too young when they did it so even though i don't remember pasta being made i do remember stories that my dad and his cousins just talked about where they would get a clean bed sheet and put it on the bed and they would take the pasta after everyone kind of shaved the pasta and put it on this clean bed sheet to dry so i don't have those memories but they do exist in my family and i've always loved those stories my great grandfather was a master carpenter he made beautiful pieces of furniture with inlaid wood and they're just gorgeous and they're scattered around my family we have a small desk that he made for my dad when he was born my brother has a toy chest that he made i obviously have my pasta board which is not fancy but it was a utilitarian piece of equipment that my great-grandmother needed i started to really want to get into the workshop and build things i like to build things out of a lot of different materials but woodworking happened to be one of them and that's what kind of led me to making my own yogi boards i made this out of a piece of wood out of my backyard a tree fell down i stole some it's silver maple so i made a gnocchi board out of silver maple and then i had some old cutting boards from one of my old jobs that i cut up and made this uh this really nice gnocchi board so it's something that is also a hobby in mind like making spoons making your keyboards and building stuff for my cavitelli this is what you're gonna need double zero flour whole milk ricotta an egg and salt let's make the cavitelli dough and i have whole milk ricotta if you don't want whole milk that's fine i just like the whole milk it's full fat makes a nice kind of rich pasta one egg salt a nice hefty pinch of salt i use kosher salt and then i'm going to mix this together just get a wooden spoon mix it together all right and that's the start of my dough you know there's different versions of this where it's semolina where they don't use eggs and this is just a version that i've landed on that i like i'm using double zero flour and if you don't know what that is that's basically italian flour that's been finely milled um i like it it doesn't it's not necessary though if you want to use all-purpose you can use all-purpose flour for this okay so i have about 2.2 pounds or a kilo of flour i'm going to put this in here i'm going to use about start with half until i have a nice kind of firm dough mix it together and i try and do all of my kind of wet work in a bowl and then once we get to a point where this this dough is kind of dry enough to handle and it's not going to stick to my hands that's when i'm going to put it onto my board and give it a good kneading stir it together if you put too much flour in you can always put a drop or two of water in but i think i'm looking good with the amount of liquid i have here i don't want this dough to be too wet because if it's too wet when you try and form the pasta it's sticky and it's kind of hard to deal with so i always err on the side of caution and make the pasta dough just a little drier than i think i need it right i have a bowl scraper and then i'm going to take this and put it out onto my board i'm gonna just start trying to bring it together it's still crumbly but if i work it a little that's why i have my dough scraper here i'm gonna have a nice cohesive dough i get to use fancy words you know and i'm just going to knead this into a nice smooth dough uh i feel like i have enough moisture if i don't have enough moisture i have just a little bit of water and i'll add a little bit of water but i like this to be a fairly firm dough and i'm just going to knead it bring it in try and get all those little pieces in there just keep on kneading that dry stuff into your dough and i think i have a really nice dough here one of my students said the other day you're not having fun unless you make a mess and this is from an eighth grader i said yeah you're pretty much right okay that's a nice dough so what i'm to do now is i'm just going to knead it until it gets a little smoother and i can feel that it's elastic so the way that i need is this i will start with my dough use my body weight push with the heel of my hand i'm looking so that it's not sticking if i have a lot of dough come off on the heel of my hand that's when i feel like i need to add a little more flour all i'm going to do is push with the heel of my hand fold it over on itself basically a quarter turn and then push down with the heel of my hand again look to see that there's no dough fold it over on itself quarter turn knead fold it over quarter turn you can go either way it doesn't matter i try and pick up all the little scraps you don't have to go for too long you can also use a machine for this if you want um i like to do it by hand just kind of like you know i feel old school i want to be old school there's a connection between kind of feeling the dough with your hands and understanding what the dough is like and i think this one's a really nice one just the main thing i want you to think about is when you're doing this try and use your body weight and don't use your muscles body weight into the dough especially if you're a little shorter use your body weight but i just wanted to have some bounce back look when i press down on it it springs back i'm forming that nice gluten all right there's my dough okay all right plastic wrap wrap it up i don't refrigerate this it can probably sit overnight if you want but i'm just going to let it sit wrapped nice and tight for about 20 minutes i have my pasta dough wrapped up you want to keep it wrapped up i'm going to cut myself a piece of the dough re-wrap it we want our pasta dough getting dry and crusty if it gets dry and crusty it's going to be problematic and hard to roll out i like to make snakes out of this so i just take my dough roll it into a nice snake and then i'm going to cut kind of like like from my tip my finger to my knuckle size pieces right this is not a small kind of dainty pasta this is a uh you know a hearty kind of rustic you know chewy pasta and that's what i want they have machines for this i'll put like a little picture of the machine up here and i like the machines i just find that they always get gummed up and i can go quicker without a machine just by hand so i have my knife i have a fork and i have my gnocchi board so i take the cut side right so i cut that side i'm going to squish it down right i squish it down and now it's a circle and then i'm going to squish down as i push forward if i squish down as i push forward not only do i get this great little ridges that the sauce holds on to i get a little cup there that the sauce goes into all right so we get the cut side the side that we cut with the knife squish it down into like a circle as we push forward we push down so we're kind of dragging it across the board squish push forward and down so if your dough is too wet you're going to have a really big problem here it's going to stick you have to have a nice kind of not dry dough but it can't be sticky so cut side down kind of squish down into a circle like the size of a quarter squish down push forward and that is our cavitellis or cavitelli right so chef frank i don't have a a gnocchi board well first of all the yucky boards are super cheap they're only about seven to ten dollars so if you don't have a gnocchi board you have two other options you can use a knife or a fork so the knife what i like to do with the knife is cut side down still you squish down and pull towards yourself you don't have the outside ridges but you still have that nice little cup that holds sauce so this one works but it's my less preferred version right squish down and pull right this is uh if you don't have a gnocchi board if you want to use a fork you do the same thing i take the fork i squish it down and i push forward this looks a little more like a gnocchi but it works just as well but like i said yucky boards aren't that expensive you can always find one fairly cheap and if you're crafty like me make your own this takes practice uh homemade pasta has been a passion of mine or handmade pasta has been a passion of mine and i think that it's kind of one of those dying arts so i've been working to kind of teach myself to learn as much as i can about how to make pasta by hand with a knife and a few small equip pieces of equipment rather than uh you know like a pasta making machine so it's just one of those things that i've been trying to learn and i want to preserve before we cook this i want to talk about the cavitelli and how it stores what i like to do is if i make a big batch which i almost always do i will leave it on the tray lightly floured and freeze it on the tray after it's like frozen solid i put it into ziploc bags back into the freezer you can cook it straight from frozen just kind of cook it maybe another minute or two but these freeze really well so i have a pot of boiling salted water and all i'm going to do is put in just a couple of portions these are rich and heavy so you don't want to put too much for everyone i always find with gnocchi and cavitelli i always make a little too much or you take too much on your plate and people can't finish it so my water is sea salty and i'm gonna let it come to a boil give it a quick stir and i'm gonna let these cook for about three to five minutes at a full rolling boil so that they cook all the way through a lot of people think just because the cavitelli is floating that they're good to go no you got to give them another minute or two after they start to float they almost start floating immediately we want them to be cooked through so i think we're good i have my spider i'm going to drain them off put them right into my bowl and we'll go back over to the cutting board and give them a taste all right so the cavitella you're done i am not going to put any sauce on these right now i'm going to take a little extra virgin olive oil i just want to taste them by themselves it's got that really nice rich signature chew uh you don't really taste ricotta but it has a little body to it this pasta goes really well with meat sauces but you can pretty much put whatever sauce you want on that makes you happy so find the sauce that makes you happy put it on your cavitelli and enjoy i hope you enjoyed this video if you did give us a thumbs up like and subscribe we have merch in the description down below we have a p.o box down there as well i want to thank my patreon patrons for helping us out we really appreciate it and that's it that is my handmade cavitelli i'm chef frank this is protocooks have a good one [Music]

Channel: ProtoCooks with Chef Frank

Views: 10,483

Keywords:

Id: CiO6jHlQlH4

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022