Pumpkin Cappellacci (I wish I were a Pasta Granny)

In the early days of isolation, we decided we needed to make a freezer inventory. No surprise that I found some items I didn’t remember I had. It seems last fall I froze three 1-cup portions of cooked pumpkin purée.

A little over a year ago, in February 2019 when I was testing recipes for The Berkshire Farm Table Cookbook (which comes out on May 19 – you can preorder at Amazon!), I was asked to test a delicious pumpkin crème brûlée. And that was when I learned you cannot find a whole pumpkin when it’s not close to Halloween or Thanksgiving! Fortunately the crème brûlée was still delicious with canned pumpkin purée – which was a good thing to check anyway. And as a result, this fall I made sure to put some homemade pumpkin purée in the freezer.

As I wondered what to make with it, I checked on Eat Your Books hoping to find a pumpkin recipe that piqued my interest, and I settled on pumpkin cappellacci in a recent cookbook my friend, Carrie, gave me called Pasta Grannies.

Vicky Bennison has been traveling around Italy making videos of grandmothers making pasta. When she realized that many of these pasta-making traditions and techniques were not being passed to the younger generations, she set about producing short films of women all across Italy making pasta by hand, and more than 75 recipes have now been compiled in this book, which includes beautiful profiles of these nonne (Italian for “grannies”). Even if you never plan to make fresh pasta by hand, do spend some time watching these talented women on YouTube. For them this is nothing special, and you can tell they are bemused about all this attention. But they graciously show us how it’s done, with subtitles (in case you’re not up on your culinary Italian vocabulary) and narration by Vicky Bennison.

I wish I could do it like they do! Vanda is the nonna who provided the recipe for the pumpkin cappellacci, and I watched the video several times before I began to work the dough. She rolls the dough by hand with a long rolling pin so easily and so smoothly! I didn’t dare try that – instead I used my hand-crank pasta roller. Then she fills and forms the cappellacci so quickly. It was pretty much an afternoon project for me. It took me so long that I had to use a spray bottle to moisten the pasta sheets that had gotten too dry because of my slow pace, in order to seal the cappellacci!

In the end it was well worth it for a delicious dinner, with enough cappellacci for a second dinner that are now in the freezer for another time! Indeed it is a project, but a fun and delicious one!

This particular recipe is online, but I made some adjustments:

1.     I used 400g King Arthur Flour Pasta Blend because it contains both durum and semolina flour, both of which are called for in the recipe, since I didn’t have any semolina.

2.     Because I had last fall’s pumpkin purée already in the freezer, I spent a good deal of time trying to estimate the right amount to defrost and settled on 2 cups, which worked out well. I felt the purée had a bit too much liquid, probably due to having been frozen, so I spread it in a shallow glass baking dish and put it in the fridge for a couple hours to allow some of the moisture could evaporate.

3.     I halved the sauce because I only cooked half of the cappellacci for the two of us, and I didn’t have fresh sage. I used sage I had frozen previously, which, obviously, was not as good as it would have been if I had had fresh, but we’re not going to the store for a single missing item these days!