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. 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 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 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 dish typical of home cooking. If you can't quite picture how cavatelli are made try renting the Francis Ford Coppola Film Godfather III, where, in one erotic scene, the Corleone cousins 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.

Posted: 01/10/2007