Cavatelli with seafood with tomato: so much flavor in this dish!

Preparing cavatelli with seafood is really simple and in less than an hour you will have a perfect first course ready for special occasions.

If you are looking for a tasty fish first course but at the same time simple to prepare, seafood cavatelli are the perfect recipe for you. The idea of ​​using this particular shape of pasta is in fact enough to ennoble a dish that is in itself very simple. Sometimes very little is needed in the kitchen and an easy recipe turns into a refined and tasty one.

We prepared them with tomato , but it is also possible to make them plain or in foil, as we reveal at the end of the recipe. As for seafood, however, we chose mussels, clams, cuttlefish and prawns flavored with just a little parsley, garlic and chilli pepper. But let's see all the steps together.

How to prepare the seafood cavatelli recipe

1. First, clean the seafood. Clean the clams by leaving them to soak in salted water (20 g of salt per liter of water) for at least a couple of hours. Clean the mussels by washing them under running water, removing the byssus and scraping the shell (if it is dirty) with a scourer.
2. Clean the shrimp by removing the shell, legs and intestines. If you use ready-made frozen ones you can skip this step.
3. Finally, clean the cuttlefish (although for convenience we recommend buying them already cleaned or asking the fishmonger to do it for you).
4. In a pan, heat the oil with the garlic clove, chilli pepper and parsley stems and cook , then remove them.
5. Add the cuttlefish cut into rings and after a couple of minutes the cherry tomatoes cut in half. After 5 minutes of cooking, add the shelled shrimp , mussels and clams . Close with the lid and wait for them to open: it will take 2-3 minutes. The water released by the mussels is perfect for giving flavor to the pasta.
6. Cook the cavatelli in abundant salted water for 5-7 minutes (taste them before draining them). Drain them and sauté them in the pan with the sauce, flavor with fresh chopped parsley and then distribute them on the plates.

Variations: cavatelli with baked and white seafood

In a similar way to the previous recipe you can prepare cavatelli baked in foil. In this case, cook the pasta for one or two minutes less than what is indicated on the label, sauté it in the pan with the sauce prepared as per the recipe, then prepare the parcels. Tear off 4 sheets of baking paper, place a little dough in the center of each, distribute the seafood and close like a candy with string. Bake at 180°C for 5 minutes. Season with fresh parsley before serving.

To prepare the white cavatelli, omit the cherry tomatoes. Immediately after adding cuttlefish, shrimp, mussels and clams, add a glass of white wine and when you no longer smell alcohol, close with the lid until the mussels and clams have opened. Drain the pasta and toss it in the pan with the sauce, adding some cooking water if needed. Season with parsley and serve.

Homemade cavatelli

If you want to try your hand at making this recipe from scratch, we recommend you also prepare the homemade cavatelli . This typical pasta format from Puglia is based only on semolina flour and water. It owes its name to the hollow that forms in the center during preparation, perfect for collecting all the flavors of the seasoning. It will take a little time but it is a simple format that does not require much skill, just a minimum of patience. To obtain 500 g of cavatelli you will need:

• 320 g of re-milled semolina
• 180ml of water

Mix the flour and water and knead to obtain a homogeneous dough. Let it rest for 30 minutes under an overturned bowl, then shape into loaves of 1 cm in diameter. Then cut them into 1cm pieces and roll them with your thumb, parallel to the loaf, sliding across the cutting board. The characteristic hollow will form. As they are ready, place them on a floured tray.

Conservation

Like all recipes with fish, it is best to prepare and consume them at the moment . If you have any leftovers, you can keep them in the refrigerator for a day and reheat them in a pan before consuming them.

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