Today we are making pasta with a sushi mat. Cavatelli is a really fun shape and it just
happens to be the easiest shape to make. You can do this with your family. You can do this
with your friends on zoom over a glass of wine. You can even do this all by yourself.
I find it very relaxing. I am not very good at meditation, so if I need to clear my mind,
I make pasta.
Before we get to the dough, let’s soak some dry porcini mushrooms for our sauce. I am
using 28 grams of porcini and 2 cups of boiling water. Give them an hour and you’ll have
the most delicious mushroom liquid to sauce your pasta.
Now onto the dough. This is exactly the same dough I showed you how to make in my orecchiette
video. But I do have a little correction to that video. The flour I used in that video
is called semola rimacinata. I incorrectly called it “Semolina” because it’s often
sold under this name in the United States. Turns out there is a difference. Both semola
and semolina are made from durum wheat, but semola is ground finer. Italian semola is
the best flour for this dough, but I have tested it with American semolina and it was
very good even though the texture of the flour was coarser. My guess is that my use of extremely
hot water makes American semolina usable for the purposes of pasta, even though it’s
not the best flour for the job. Thanks to my wonderful viewer Adam Churvis for bringing
it to my attention.
What I’ll do today is replace a bit of my semola flour with whole wheat flour to make
my pasta more earthy, but that’s completely optional.
Dump the flour mix into the food processor. Add 175g of water at 170F. Start the processor.
You might need to scrape it down a bit.
When you get the little tornado of dough,
get it out,
and knead for 8 minutes. In the beginning, it will be very sticky, but will quickly even
out. If you are in a very humid environment, you might need to add some flour when kneading.
For a very detailed video of this technique, check out my water based pasta dough video
in the description below.
Sprinkle the dough with flour on both sides, wrap it up, and let it rest for 30 minutes.
I should probably tell you what people in Italy use to shape this pasta. They use a
board with ridges. You can certainly buy one of those on amazon, but I never bothered to
do that because I already had a sushi mat at home. Unlike the pasta boards, sushi mats
are available at most supermarkets for just a few dollars, so I thought it might be a
cheaper and more accessible option for most people. Besides, it’s fun to say that you’ve
made pasta with a sushi mat.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or foil and sprinkle it liberally with semola
flour. This is where we’ll place our finished pasta.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and cut it into strips. Roll out the strips
on an un-floured surface. This ensures that they won’t slide. When you get a rope that
is ½ inch in diameter, cut the strips into little pieces.
Coat the pieces generously with flour. For shaping you can use either semola or all-purpose.
I am using all-purpose. Place a piece on a sushi mat and roll it from one rope to the
other rope. The most important thing is to apply a lot of pressure with your finger to
create a hollow shape. This helps your pasta cook evenly and also helps it trap the sauce.
You don’t want to end up with fat little cylinders because they’ll taste tough and
gummy.
I usually line a bunch of pieces next to one rope and then roll them starting with the
piece closest to me. If you encounter any sticking, use more flour.
If you want your ridges to be more diagonal, roll your pieces at a slight angle. Here let’s
do that slowly.
See -- a little angle. When you finish a pile, dump the cavatelli onto the baking dish. Make
sure to keep them in a single layer so that they don’t stick together.
By the way, while you are working with one rope of dough, it’s generally a good idea
to cover the rest of the dough with plastic wrap so that it doesn’t dry up. As I was
editing this video, I realized that I forgot to do that. That’s fine if you can shape
really quickly, but probably not a good idea on your first try.
Ok, our pasta is done and we can make a sauce.
This dish is a mushroom lover’s dream. The flavor will come from that delicious porcini
liquid. And the texture will come from the fresh mushrooms. I have some portabellas here
that I’ll cut into a large dice. Yes, it’s completely ok to wash them and dry them. I’ll
also add some maitake mushrooms that are known as hen of the woods. But you can use whatever
mushrooms you want. Maitake are much more delicate than portabella, so I wouldn’t
wash them. Luckily, they grow on trees so there is no dirt to wash off, especially since
these ones are cultivated. Slicing them will give me plenty of flat surfaces that will
brown nicely. I discard the thicker stems, because they tend to be a bit woody and dirty.
Let’s give these a coarse chop. You don’t need to make them too small, they’ll naturally
break apart as they cook.
I also have a few little shiitake caps that we’ll use. When you chop your mushrooms,
keep the sturdy ones and flimsy ones separate. Sturdy ones would be portabella, cremini,
or button mushrooms. And flimsy ones would be maitake, shiitake, chanterelle, oyster,
and other more delicate varieties. This way we can give the sturdy mushrooms a head start
in the skillet before adding the flimsy ones. In the end, you should have about 500 grams
of chopped up mushrooms.
Let’s set a large deep skillet over high heat and add 2 Tbsp of olive oil. When the
oil is hot, add the portabellas and a pinch of salt. Have a lid handy. Add a splash of
dry white wine and cover immediately. Let the mushrooms cook for a couple of minutes
to release their moisture.
Uncover the pan and wait for all the moisture to evaporate.
Then add the flimsy mushrooms, another pinch of salt and another glug of oil. Continue
cooking on high heat checking regularly. Don’t stir until you get color. This looks good.
Let’s stir.
Keep cooking like this, regulating the heat so that the mushrooms brown steadily, but
don’t burn.
Ah -- that’s a beautiful mushroom. When you have a lot of browning, take the pan off
heat, and get the mushrooms out so that the porcini liquid and pasta water don’t make
them soggy.
Add a quarter cup of dry white wine to the pan. You should probably wait a bit for the
pan to cool off. Then strain the porcini liquid through a damp paper towel lined colander
into the pan. Don’t skip the paper towel or you might have a sandy sauce. The next
step always raises a lot of eye brows in my classes. I throw away the dry porcini. If
yours are clean and not full of worms, by all means, chop them up and use them. But
for the life of me I can’t find such porcini where I live. Mine are always so dirty that
I have to wash every little piece 5 times scraping the dirt out of every crevice. They
are also insanely wormy. These worms are dead and harmless, but not very appetizing. So
I prefer to limit myself to the soaking liquid. Whenever I travel to France or Italy, I always
manage to find porcini without these issues. So just because I throw mine away, doesn’t
mean you need to throw yours away.
Bring your porcini liquid to a simmer.
Dump your pasta into a pot of boiling crazily salted water, stir, and cover just until you
get your boil back. When the pasta floats, give it a minute and start tasting. You want
it to be slightly undercooked because it will cook more in the mushroom sauce. Get the pasta
out with a slotted spoon and into the pan with porcini liquid. Don’t drain in a colander
so that the flour that we used to prevent sticking stays in the bottom of the pot.
Cook on low heat stirring constantly until the sauce barely starts to thicken. Taste
for salt and if you need more, splash in some pasta cooking water or just add salt directly.
Stir in ⅓ of a cup of heavy cream and let everything simmer for a minute. Keep tasting
all along, but don’t season it all the way yet since the sauce will continue to reduce.
When the sauce is thick enough that a spoon leaves a trail, add 2 Tbsp of butter, a generous
sprinkling of parmesan, the mushrooms, and a little parsley and chives. Stir it all together
and taste carefully for salt. Keep adding pasta water to make the sauce a bit runnier
than you would ideally want because it will continue to thicken for a couple of minutes
as you serve the pasta.
This is a phenomenal dish. It’s both luxurious and comforting at the same time. I hope you
give it a try and make this pasta with someone you love whether you do it in person or not.
Here are more culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in the Boston
area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.