Cavatelli

Frozen cavatelli

Cavatelli translates to 'small hollows' and in in New Jersey is sold frozen in plastic bags. There are dry boxed versions that don't even come close to the dense texture of the frozen variety and in recent years, there is a shelf-stable, vacuum-packed option available -- even in Maine where I've NEVER seen the frozen variety. I can't bring myself to try the vacuum-packed variety and the dry boxed version s nothing but a glorified shell pasta.

I have to admit that until recently, I never made these from scratch since they seem like a lot of work if you make them the traditional way which involves rolling each individual piece of pasta on the tines of a fork or a special grooved gnocchi board to create little grooves to help hold whatever sauce you serve them with.

Some people roll their cavatelli on a gnocchi board.

Home made cavatelli with no ridges.

Interestingly, the store-bought frozen cavatelli on the right doesn't have the ribs, so I'm guessing it's not really that important after all.....

While I was making Struffoli for Christmas 2025, it occurred to me that not only is the dough working similar to making cavatelli, but the dough itself feels a lot like pasta dough. And the next trip down the rabbit hole began!

To test my theory, I kept a large handful of the cut 'straws' of dough aside and boiled them in a small pot of well salted water to see what would happen. They cooked and floated to the top just like the frozen ones, so that was a good sign. I strained the 'pasta' and in a small bowl mixed it with a pat of butter, some cracked pepper, and some grated Parmesan to create a quick cacio e pepe, or pasta with cheese and pepper. Then, I took it to my very discriminating taste tester (my husband John) and got a thumbs up!

As soon as the Christmas cookie barrage was over, I whipped up a batch of struffoli dough with a minor addition of some ricotta to soften the dough a bit. I followed the process of rolling the dough into a round, cutting the strips, and rolling the strips into tubes. I adjusted the length when I cut up the tubes and made them longer (1/2"+/-) to reflect the size of the frozen pasta I'm accustomed to. (For the struffoli they get cut into 1/4' bits). What I didn't bother to do was to roll them on the board or fork tines to get the ridges. I actually used this batch in Italian wedding soup that I prepared for a luncheon with some friends. In soup, there's no sauce to be concerned with.

Just like my gnocchi from scratch, I spread the cavatelli out on cookie sheets and placed them in the freezer. Once frozen, they can be transferred to zipper freezer bags and kept frozen for a year.

Note that these images are from making the struffoli, you'll want to cut the cavatelli in bigger lengths.

THE RECIPE:

5c flour

2t baking powder

1t salt

3T white wine (DO NOT leave this out)

6 eggs beaten

1/4 C ricotta

1/4c oil

Whisk together the dry ingredients

Whisk the wine, oil, and eggs until blended

Add liquid to flour mixture and knead until smooth and completely combined. I typically use the stand mixer and dough hook, but it's an easy dough to work so not a big deal to do it the old fashioned way.

if the dough feels too sticky, it's perfectly OK to knead in additional flour (a couple of tablespoons at a time) until it feels right.

Divide dough into quarters and cover three with a towel in a bowl.

Roll the first quarter of the dough out into a circle to 1/8” thick.

Cut the rolled out dough into strips about a half inch wide.

Roll each strip of dough between your palms into a long ‘rope’ (part straw and part worm).

Cut the 'straws' into 1/2" - 3/4" lengths and freeze before storing in zipper bags.

When you do cook them, they should boil for 15 minutes or so, but I can ell you that in the wedding soup, they held up through re-heating without getting all mushy like other pasta or rice would.

Next week, we'll talk about how to say cavatelli and my favorite cavatelli dish, Broccoli and Cavatelli.