The LEGENDARY Cavatelli Pasta I Can’t Stop Eating

Cavatelli sausage and broccoli or broccoli wrap is one of the most legendary pastas to ever exist but why is it always when I order this dish at a great restaurant it's always so insanely salty oftentimes the sausage is in these enormous chunks in most cases it's really really dry and I know you know what I'm talking about so today we're going to make it the proper way and we're gonna Master a new skill making fresh Cavatelli with our hands no machine and that process starts yesterday now for Cavatelli we're gonna make a semolina dough which is made from semolina flour and a little bit of warm water that we're heating up right now and I'm making this in March we're coming out of winter not quite as dry so I'm gonna go with about 440 grams of the semolina flour pour the flour onto the board and then make a little well with that core container and then to that we're going to measure out 260 grams of warm water now to make this dough we're going to use two tools a bench scraper and a fork we're talking real advanced technology energy here now pour that water into the well and start to slowly pull in the flour from the wall and whisk it into the water to start to form a paste and once it's too thick to work with a fork transition to a bench scraper and start to fold the wall of flour into that paste scrape under that dough get some of that flour underneath the dough and release it from the board and then just start to cut the dough with a bench scraper to get that dry flour incorporated into the dough and then begin to compress the mixture until it becomes somewhat of a workable dough scrape all that excess flour towards the dough so that it can be sucked up now we're just going to start kneading the dough to continue to work that flour into it using that dough to suck up any of that remaining flour on The Cutting Board and then just work the dough to take it from a lumpy Mass into a springy smooth ball of dough now for me there's really two techniques I like to teach to kneading the first one is a one-handed need where you take the far end of the Dome pull it back with the palm of your dominant hand until that far end of the dough is mushed into the end of the dough closest to you and then press down and push forward with Force to seal the two ends and then turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat now some people have bad wrists especially the older you get like a grandma so we could also choose to do the two-handed grandma method where we almost roll that dough into like a long log and then fold the ends onto the dough rolling it back out into a log and repeating that process kneading it for about three to five minutes both work and you can do whatever you like we're just looking for a nice smooth springy dough after this first need take some plastic wrap that dough nice and tightly in the plastic and then allow it to rest on this board for about 30 minutes before we knead it again for like another five minutes or so so now it's been about 30 minutes you can get the dough out of the plastic I always like making pasta dough with my hand so I can feel it like right now I can feel this feels like a nicely hydrated dough it's not over hydrated it's not too dry it seals up it's not not sticking to my hand that is a good judge of hydration and so now we're just going to knead it for another three to five minutes those easier to work with you can start to feel it tightening up a little bit and that's where you get this chew with a semolina dough it's a lot chewier to me it's like a more pleasant texture especially for something like a Cavatelli and now we make a lot of pasta on this show just like I'm improving you should be improving as well and once you've got your little motion down right you pull the dough back Push It Forward turn it pull it back and you kind of find your little efficient way of moving your hands then you can start to work on speed you can develop more gluten faster and then making pasta suddenly becomes not a big issue at all you just bang it out 10 minutes 15 minutes of kneading total and you've got pasta dough it just needs to sit around and rest until you're ready to roll it and now once I've kneaded it pretty hard I'm going to decrease the pressure and just start to kind of get a nice shape a nice smooth surface along the outside and a nice round shape almost like the way the that you seal a pizza dough almost pinching off the edge trying to almost get it into a nice little ball see something like that bottom is sealed top is smooth and round and now if you were going to use this today what you would do is wrap this up let this sit down on the counter for another two hours and then you can go ahead and start making your Cavatelli and I've done that before especially when testing this recipe but it's just better the next day so I like to make it the day ahead let it rest on tomorrow you could literally roll out Cavatelli and make this whole dish in a matter of 20 minutes so we're going to wrap it back up and get it into the fridge so it's the next day and here is our pasta we took it out of the refrigerator and now it's kind of come down and it's a bit more room temperature just a little easier to work with now get the dough out of the plastic and cut about a quarter of the dough and wrap the rest of the dough up so it doesn't dry out and roll that dough out with the palm of your hands into about a half inch thick rope the thickness of the dough really matters here too thick and it's just a really large over roaming piece of Cavatelli in the final dish too thin and the Cavatelli kind of has no bite I find a half inch is the right thickness once you've got it rolled out into that half inch thick rope fold the Rope onto itself and then again so that you have four equal strips and then cut those strips so that they're all independent of each other now Cavatelli is in the stretchenathy family of dough which means to tear so we're going to be tearing the dough with our fingers to form this dough and you can use one finger two fingers or three fingers to form it I think three fingers is the best size for this pasta so we're going to measure the dough out with our three fingers and after cutting I can see they're kind of sticking together so I'm going to take a little bit of semolina flour and just dust them to protect them from sticking and then go ahead and cut those three finger pieces up once you've got them all cut push aside any excess flour we don't want them when we're rolling the Cavatelli and to form the pasta align your three fingers over the piece of dough press down gently and then roll back towards you and you can see I've torn the edge of this piece right here I pushed a little too hard in the end the pressure here is essential so you must calibrate it so that you're applying even pressure throughout and once you've got that down you can really start to bang out the shape quite quickly foreign [Music] get them into a vessel with plenty of semolina flour to ensure that they don't stick until you're ready to use them while you roll out the rest of the pasta which to be honest is really quite soothing and relaxing and if you don't make pasta that often maybe you should be now this is what your Cavatelli should look like nice smooth rounded and even these are perfect now I've been cooking for one for five years now and a lot of people don't even consider how to cook for one if you don't want to be left with tons of leftovers So today we're going to make this pasta for one because the idea of scaling it up becomes very easy a quarter of the dough becomes one portion of pasta what I found is a head of broccoli depending on its size if it's a big one about half of the crowns will be enough for one portion and about one sausage link so if you're cooking for four you use the whole dough you use two heads of broccoli four sausages and a few more cloves of garlic and that's it but today we're going to focus on making it for one because it is something I do all the time and to be honest it's more fun because you kind of can feel a bit more like you're cooking on the line of a restaurant first thing you want to do is slice out garlic just cut them in half peel the skins off and you want to give them a really really thin slice that's my preferred way to cut garlic then into a bowl and then we're gonna to cut our broccoli and I'm going to cut the stems off I don't need them what I'm going to do is cut each floret in half and then turn it and cut those two pieces of broccoli into little dices want the pieces fairly small here and it's okay if some of the florets break up a little bit I want all those different types of texture some big some large and get those all into a bowl and then we're going to take our sausage and I'm buying some in links I'm just going to sort of squeeze them out of their casing and just sort of pluck up these small little bite-sized chunks and get them onto a plate and now I generally like a little bit of heat in this dish and generally you would add like a chili flake or maybe even a calabrian chili which is very popular now but I kind of wanted to make a little bit of my own hot sauce so take about half this jar of cherry peppers and I'm gonna add enough of the juice that they were packed in to turn it into a nice puree I'm going to use a hand blender and I'm just gonna let that go until that pepper is nicely pureed and the whole mixture is nice and smooth now what you have here is like an Emulsion of the cherry peppers and it's liquid and it probably will separate over time and it's kind of just like a hot sauce like a spicy bright acidic addition to an already delicious dish now you can go ahead and add some cherry peppers to the dish as well but then it would just be like if you want the texture the heat is in here and I'm just gonna kind of omit that for now because I just like the flavor of this now we've got everything to make this dish we've got a nice manageable bite of sausage which is one of my problems with this dish we've got beautiful Cavatelli ready to go we've got some nice flavor River editions in our Cherry pepper hot sauce and to make it extra creamy we're gonna tie it in with some parmigiano reggiano and now usually they serve it with a pecorino Romano but I just find pecorino to be a little too salty and the biggest issue I have is the level of salt you get in a restaurant usually a restaurant's making this in a heavily salted pot of water and chefs like to overdo it with salt sometimes not only is the pot heavily salted but they'll heavily salt the sausage heavily salt the broccoli use a lot of pecorino and then at the end it's just all too much salt So today we're going to lower the amount of salt we cook the pasta water in we're gonna season each element accordingly but we know we're going to use a lot of Parmesan cheese at the end so we're just kind of planning and using enough salt so that at the end it's just so palatable it's not salty at all even if you pile on the cheese it's gonna be perfect so now let's just jump into it so the setup over at the stove is a medium sized pot filled with boiling water to cook the pasta in and I'm going to use a 3 Court Saucier which is my go-to pasta pot get the Saucier hot and add a little bit of oil to coat the pan and once it's hot add this sausage and spread it out around the pan and just leave it alone for a few minutes to just Brown that side of the sausage once you see that side start to Brown then you can sort of Stir It Up breaking up any pieces that are a little too big I like a nice medium sized chunk for this recipe and then just allow those pieces of sausage to Brown up really well and once each of those pieces of sausage is nicely browned we want to remove it from the pan but we want to keep that oil in the Saucier return the pan back to the heat set that sausage aside while you add in the broccoli season with salt and we're going to treat it the same way I'm just going to add a little bit of oil and give it a quick toss and then I'm going to leave it alone and allow it to sear untouched on that side for a few minutes once that side of the broccoli Browns stir it a bit to kind of brown it evenly and then we're going to add in that garlic a little bit more oil if needed and we're going to cook it until that garlic begins to toast around the edges and then we're going to return the sausage back into the pot to bring it all together now the water is boiling I'm going to add two to three tablespoons of salt we don't want to go too crazy here and then add the Cavatelli they're really only going to cook for about a minute and a half to two minutes so keep them moving and they're gonna float once they're ready now you see that garlic is really nicely toasted we're going to take that cherry pepper sauce that we Blended earlier and add a few tablespoons of it into the pan get everything tossed up maybe add a squirt or two more or if you like heat and then I'm going to take some of that pasta water and basically deglaze the pan with it around this time the pasta should start to float and at this point I want to get it immediately out of the cooking water and into the sauce with another three tablespoons or so of the pasta water turn the heat back on and begin tossing this pasta in the sauce reducing that sauce allowing it to thicken and coat and glaze that pasta once you can see that sauce has thickened on the bottom of the pan I'm gonna turn the heat off then I'm going to thin it back out with a little bit more pasta water because I know I'm going to add cheese to it and the cheese is going to thicken it and I need a liquid to melt it into then I'm going to start tossing the pasta off the heat and tossing it will cool the pasta down allowing it to get to a lower temperature that's going to allow that cheese to melt in creamy and not stringy so I'm going to start to sprinkle that cheese in while I'm tossing it or stirring it off of the stove or heat either way it's all about controlling the temperature to make this cheese creamy and it's a lesson we get from cachoi Pepe learning that method properly allows us to carry that through to other recipes like this once all the cheese is added and it's nice and creamy looks a little bit thick to me so I'm going to add a little bit more pasta water to adjust it to the proper consistency and then it's perfect the sauce glazes the pasta it's creamy and it's ready to serve and we're just gonna plate it up nicely in a nice bowl and what I love about this pasta is The Rustic nature of it it's like you can feel the fingerprint in each piece of pasta that you roll this bowl of pasta is up there and some of the best pastas you're gonna eat if you've never tried this combination or if you've never tried homemade Cavatelli you must make this now I mean I just am going to devour this salt level perfect sausage is small enough to be dispersed but not too small where it gets lost and the creaminess speaks for itself you'll never order it at a restaurant again when you can make it like this recipe is going to be linked down in the description that's all we have today I'll see you next time until then take care of yourself and go feed yourself [Music]

Channel: NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW

Views: 620,096

Keywords: Cavatelli by hand, how to make cavatelli, Cavatelli broccoli and sausage, not another cooking show, Stephen cusato, the food freak pasta, pasta, how to make fresh pasta

Id: hFibF3AMrx4

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023