Our pals at Rio Vista Olives sent us the incredible oil that we cook with in this post. Like everything that we recommend on our blog, we use and love their products, and hope that you will too!
The Story
I’m not going to say that we ran out of fresh ingredients due to poorly-timed lockdown grocery deliveries, but if that had hypothetically happened, this would have been the perfect pasta solution. This week’s cappelletti are made with a fennel seed dough and a simple, comforting filling of roasted potato and fennel. We served them up with crispy potato skins, a delicious agrumato, and a scattering of crushed pink peppercorns. Sometimes it takes a pantry emergency to remind you that the simple food is often the best!
The Pasta
For all of the flours that we like to experiment with, good old all-purpose flour will always have your back. It’s been a while since I nerded out on gluten, and I won’t do it to you now, but I will summarise by saying that experimenting with flours is essentially just balancing protein percentage, gluten strength, and elasticity. That means that when we use a high ratio of 00 flour, which is fairly elastic and lower in protein, we’ll often supplement it by bumping up the protein with a small amount of semolina or even bread flour. Mostly a personal preference there for firmer pasta. Similarly, if we’re working with something that’s got that good strong gluten but isn’t super elastic (like wholemeal flour) or even something without gluten (like cocoa) we might add some 00 to take it in the other direction and make it easier to shape. Often, the protein, gluten strength, and elasticity that we’re trying to achieve by ‘balancing’ those flours is very similar to that of unbleached all-purpose. So, if you’re ever stuck without whatever random flour we’re using in our recipes, you can always replace the whole flour component with all-purpose. This week, we’re saving you the trouble! Because we hypothetically ran out of flour options too…
Fire up the oven and toss the potatoes and fennel in before you get started on the dough. They’ll roast for about 45 minutes, with the fennel benefitting from an occasional toss. Once they’re done, peel and rice the potatoes while still warm, and blend them up with the fennel. That’s your filling done. We highly recommend hanging on to those skins too. Just drizzle them with a little more oil, sprinkle with salt, and shove them back in the oven for a few minutes until crispy.
To make the dough, mound up the flour and ground fennel seed into a well, and crack the eggs into the middle. Stir it all up, knead it around wildly for 10 minutes, and then rest it for 30. Since I’ve already gotten going on the gluten thing… Make sure that you don’t skimp on the knead time. This is really where you develop the gluten bonds that will grant you exceptional, silky, malleable dough. I normally notice a change in the dough around the 7 minute mark, then give it another 3 for good luck.
We’ve used a stunning ravioli mould from 44 Hand Made Turkey to stamp our cappelletti this week. It’s not a typical use for one of these things, but added a fun bit of detail to the pasta. We decided to leave our dough a little thicker than usual to maximise the texture from the stamp: so roll it incrementally through to a setting of 5 or 6 (on a 9-setting machine). Stamp out your circles and then press and fill on the moulds one at a time, if using them. Otherwise just squeeze a dollop onto every circle and get folding.
To form the cappelletti, simply bring one corner around the filling to overlap slightly with the other corner, and pinch them together firmly where they meet. Give them a firm poke in the side of the filling if you’re having trouble with that last fold.
Boil your cappelletti in a big salty pot of water, remembering that a thicker dough will really blow out that cook time. Then serve them up with a very generous glug of agrumato, those crispy potato skins, and a few crushed pink peppercorns.
That’s it! It’s a simple recipe, with a tiny ingredient list and not a whole heap of cooking, but it’s guaranteed to hit the spot.
Happy pasta-making, and buon appetito.
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Oven
- Round cookie cutter, approximately 10cm diameter
- Patterned ravioli mould, optional
- Piping bag with medium round tip (alternatively, you can use a teaspoon)
Ingredients
Pasta Dough
- 400 g plain flour
- 20 g fennel seed ground
- 4 eggs
Pasta Filling
- 220 g potato washed and unpeeled
- 450 g fennel roughly chopped (note, this should reduce to around 180g after cooking)
- 1 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- Salt and pepper to taste
To Plate
- 2 tbsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista's agrumato)
- 2 tsp pink peppercorns crushed
- Roasted potato skins retained from making the filling (optional)
Instructions
- Toss the fennel with the olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper. Cook on an oven tray at 200 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes, with the unpeeled potatoes sitting across a rack in the same oven.
- While they cook, combine all dough ingredients and knead vigorously for 10 minutes. Seal in cling wrap and rest for 30 minutes away from direct sunlight and heat.
- Peel the potatoes before they cool, retaining the skins. Optionally drizzle the skins with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and return to the oven for a further 5-10 minutes until crispy.
- Blend the potato and fennel together until smooth and load into a piping bag. If the potato seems excessively wet, rice and spread it out before blending, allowing moisture to evaporate.
- Using a pasta machine, roll the dough through on the thickest setting 2-3 times, folding over itself in between passes. Then step up incrementally to a medium thickness, 5 or 6 on a 9-setting machine.
- Use a round cookie cutter to cut the dough into circles of around 10cm diameter. If using a mould to imprint the dough like us, lightly flour and press now to add your pattern.
- Squeeze a large walnut sized dollop of filling into the middle of each circle, and then fold in half, sealing into semicircles. To form into cappelletti, bring one corner around the filling to slightly overlap with the other corner; pinch the overlap together firmly.
- Cook in a large pot of lightly salted boiling water until dough is cooked (there should be no raw, white dough visible when the pasta is cut into). Note that these may take longer than usual to cook, as the dough is very thick.
- Serve tossed in the agrumato, with the crispy potato skins and a sprinkle of crushed pink peppercorns.
Very very nice page and you can learn a lot from it
Thank you, very nice page