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Food & Entertaining

Recipe

Hearst Editorial

bowl of homemade cavatelli with garlic chili oil

Andrew bui

- Hey, Delish. My name is AJ Sankofa and I'm the founder of ESO Artisanal Pasta in Morristown and the executive chef of Cree Wine Company in Hampton. So today, we're gonna be making fresh cavatelli pasta that I learned from my great sous-chef who is directly from Sicily. So the key ingredients that you're gonna need today is high quality semolina flour, fresh garlic and great Pecorino Romano. Couple of tools that I have with me today are a bench scraper and a little cavatelli board but no frets. If you don't have these materials, you can do everything with just your thumbs. First thing we're gonna do is pour all of our flour out onto the wooden cutting board. From there, you're gonna create a mound and pour your water directly into the center of that mound. Add a little bit of salt. So one important thing to note is that you wanna use fine salt when you're adding it to your water. That way, the dough stays smooth and consistent. And slowly start kneading the dough together with a fork. Sticking to Southern Italian tradition, this recipe does not contain egg. It's just semolina flour and water. Everybody's kitchen is gonna be different, different temperature, different humidity so you always wanna start with a little bit of water and add as you go to make sure your dough comes out as great as possible. (calm music) Every time you add water, you want to try to make a well or at least push the dough down as flat as possible so that you can incorporate the water and then knead it over. I'm still a little bit patchy in my dough. What I'm looking for is a smooth consistency and I'll build that by continuing to slowly add water until I get it just right. One important thing at the end of your dough making process is to wet your fingertips lightly while you continue kneading to get a homogenous final product. Once your dough is completely homogenous, we wanna let it rest for at least 30 minutes. So what we're gonna do is wrap it in plastic. So make sure once you wrap your dough that you leave it out at ambient temperature. So the reason you wanna leave your dough out at ambient temperature is so that the dough can relax after we've been kneading it for about 10 minutes. This will allow you to actually be able to shape and make the pasta. While our dough is resting, I'm gonna finely slice some garlic for the garlic chili oil that we'll toss the pasta in. So once you have your garlic sliced, what you wanna do is take your pan, cover it with a little bit of olive oil and then submerge the garlic in that oil so it doesn't oxidize. Right now, we're gonna start portioning out our dough so that we can roll it out and make our fresh cavatelli. Once you have a small portion sectioned off, what you're gonna do is slowly start to roll it out. So we're gonna continue rolling our dough out until we reach a circumference of about a quarter to a half inch and then we're gonna cut those into one and a half to two inch strips. (calm music) This is about the size you're looking for and then you're gonna slowly press this down onto your surface, put your thumb right inside of it and then roll it off. Essentially, you're looking to create like a boat. So you're creating a divot with your thumb and then rolling it straight off so that you have a boat for the sauce. Now I'm gonna show you how to do it with a cavatelli crank. One thing that's crucial to your cavatelli production is making sure that you can control the temperature and humidity in your room as best as possible. So the drier the room is and the colder the temperature, the more difficult it's gonna be for you to shape your cavatelli. One trick that I like to use is boiling a couple of pots of water to create steam which gives your room humidity and makes it easier to manipulate your dough. So this is my fiancee, partner and best friend, Kristina Gambarian and together we started ESO Artisanal Pasta in 2020 and we've been making fresh pasta ever since. So when you're using the cavatelli crank, no need to cut it up in small pieces. You'll take a longer piece of your dough that's already rolled out to a quarter inch to half inch circumference and you'll feed it right through the machine. (calm music) One key tip is to always toss a little bit of semolina flour on your freshly made pasta. This will help keep the shape intact and avoid any clinginess or stickiness in the dough. So now we have all of our pasta made, our garlic's in the pan and our water's about to come to a boil. Let's dive right into the sauce. We're gonna add one tablespoon of chili flake to the pan. This point, we're gonna turn the pan onto a medium low heat and start to get that garlic sizzling. So we're looking for a light golden brown color on the garlic and to toast the chili flakes in the olive oil. This is what we're looking for on the sauce. As you can see, it's got a very, very light golden brown consistency and the garlic has actually started to melt a little bit in the pan. It's perfect. So now that our water is at a rolling boil, we're gonna add four tablespoons of coarse salt. This point, what we're gonna do is place our cavatelli in the boiling water and wait for it to float. Once it's floating, we know it's fully cooked and we'll transfer it from the water to our pan and start tossing. (calm music) Once the pasta is fully coated, we're gonna add our Pecorino Romano and toss. So now that we've got our pasta in the pan, we're gonna make sure we add a little bit of that starchy water we cooked it in to help us build an emulsion. We're gonna continue adding cheese and starchy water until we build a nice thick, creamy sauce. Add your parsley at the end to make sure it stays bright green. (calm music) Look at how creamy this sauce is. I mean, seriously, guys. So easy to make, simple. Cheese, garlic and a little bit of olive oil goes a long way. That's how you make cavatelli. That was so easy to make. I hope you guys try this recipe at home. Till next time, Delish. (calm music)

New Jersey pasta maker and chef AJ Sankofa walks us through how to make cavatelli, his favorite fuss-free shapes that doesn't require a machine.

Homemade Cavatelli

Ingredients

For the Cavatelli

For the Garlic Chili Oil

Directions

Meals & Cooking