Cavatelli with Arugula
Cavatieddi con la Ruca
Region: Italy, Apulia
Category: Pasta with Vegetables
Season: Any
Difficulty: Easy and Quick

 Cavatelli is a kind of pasta popular in southern Italy and Sicily that looks like a cowry shell. It derives its name from the verb cavare, to pull away. The pasta dough, once only made with hard wheat flour and water, but today with other flours such as barley flour, is rolled out into long ropes that are cut off in small segments to form small morsels that are then flattened into disks with the thumb or the edge of a knife to form a pasta called orecchiette. These disks are rolled away, doubling up on themselves, to become cavatelli. Cavatieddi is the Apulian dialect name for this rustic pasta typical of home cooking. In fact, cavatelli is almost always homemade in Apulia--I've never seen an Apulian cook use store bought.  If you can't quite picture how cavatelli are made watch the Francis Ford Coppola film Godfather III, where Vinny Mancini (Andy Garcia) instructs Mary Corleone (Sofia Coppola) in making gnocchi in an erotically charged scene.  The method of pushing and rolling away is almost the same for making cavatelli. Or you can take a look at the pictures on how to make cavatelli.  La ruca is the dialect term for arugula.

Yield: Makes 4 servings
Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Salt     1 pound cavatelli     1 pounds arugula, washed and chopped

1 cup warm or hot tomato sauce       Freshly grated pecorino cheese

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, salt abundantly, and add the pasta. Cook for 2 minutes and add the arugula. Drain when the pasta is al dente and toss with the tomato sauce and pecorino cheese. Serve.

Variation:  Instead of using tomato sauce and pecorino cheese, heat 1/ 4 cup extra virgin olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, then add 2 finely chopped garlic cloves and 4 rinsed salted anchovy fillets, stirring until they melt, about 1 minute. Drain the pasta and arugula and toss with the olive oil-and-anchovy sauce.

Note: 

Posted: 01/10/2007