FOOD NEWS
13 Unconventional Pasta Shapes You Should Know About
BY ASIA LONDON PALOMBA
Cavatelli
Cavatelli is a simple shape with a caved center perfect for latching onto the sauce. There are also grooved variations formed by shaping the dough on a fork.
Once cooked, it's soft and chewy, resembling the consistency of gnocchi. This shape is traditionally served in a decadent ragù sauce with pork ribs and sausage.
Strozzapreti
Translating to "priest strangler," strozzapreti is a unique pasta shape made without eggs, likely born out of the 19th-century common people's anger towards priests.
According to legend, priests would collect taxes at lunchtime and demand to be fed while doing so. The working class invented the pasta shape in the hopes of choking them.
Malloreddus
These small pasta shapes have ridged shells that resemble stylized gnocchi. They're shaped with a rigagnocchi — a grooved cutting board — and have a chewy consistency.
The pasta can be enjoyed in several ways, including the famous Malloreddus alla Campidanese made with a fragrant tomato, sausage, saffron, and fennel seeds ragù.
Trofie
Trofie is thin and twisted with many little ridges that are perfect for sopping up pesto sauce. It's made only with water and hard durum wheat semolina flour.
Trofie is famously associated with pesto and a popular, traditional dish that blends the pasta shape and pesto sauce with tender boiled potatoes and green beans.
Cappelletti
Translating to "little hats," cappelletti is a stuffed pasta named after medieval priest hats. It is thicker and doughier than tortellini, making for a hearty meal.
The filling for the stuffed pasta has stoked controversy among different regions. It is cooked in a brodo (broth) enriched by capon, a rooster that is castrated before it matures.