Scialatielli con frutti di mare

FrankCampania, pasta, primi piatti29 Comments

Scialatielli

I was in the lovely town of Praiano on the Amalfi Coast recently for a family wedding. There I discovered a rather thick semi-long fresh pasta called scialatielli, served with a delicious sauce of lobster simmered in fresh tomato. It was a most memorable meal, made even more special by the gorgeous view…

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Scialatielli are the brain child of chef Enrico Cosentino of Il Buco restaurant in Sorrento back in the 1970s. In recent years they’ve become a mainstay on restaurant menus throughout the Sorrentine Peninsula and popular in the wider Naples area. In typical southern Italian style they’re made with durum wheat flour but, very atypically, the flour is mixed not with water but with milk and egg, and flecked with minced basil.

Scialatielli have an appealing tender yet chewy texture and a rather unique flavor. They lend themselves to all sorts of sauces, but classically you serve them con frutti di mare—with mixed seafood sauce—which you can make “red” or “white” (with or without tomato) or as here, something in between, with a few fresh cherry tomatoes.

Do be aware that, like bucatini, scialatielli are a messy pasta. Since they’re thick and not quite long enough to twirl properly with a fork, the sauce tends to splatter on you when you eat them. According to a Neapolitan friend of mine, that’s what makes them fun to eat.

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Do take care and be prepared to do some extra laundry. And don’t let that deter you. if you ask me, the mess is well worth it.

Ingredients

For the scialatielli:

  • 400g (14 oz) semola rimacinata, finely ground semolina flour
  • 30 g (1 oz) grated pecorino or parmigiano-reggiano cheese, or 50:50 mix of both
  • 2 eggs
  • 150ml (5 fl oz) milk, or as much as you need to form a soft, pliable dough
  • 2 Tbs olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • 3-4 basil leaves, finely minced

For the seafood sauce:

  • 350 g (12 oz) shrimp, shelled
  • 500g (1 lb) unshelled mussels
  • 12 unshelled clams
  • 350g (12 oz) cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled and slightly crushed
  • olive oil
  • salt
  • A few sprigs of parsley, finely minced and reserving the stems

Optional:

  • A hot red pepper

Directions

Make your scialatielli

In a standing mixer, add the flour, forming a well in the middle. Then add the rest of the dough ingredients except for milk into the well. Mix at a medium-high speed, drizzling in enough milk until the mixture forms a ball. Continue for another 5 minutes to knead the dough.

Remove the dough from the bowl of the standing mixer and place it on a well floured board. Using well floured hands, knead the dough ball by hand until perfectly smooth, elastic dough. It should be soft but not sticky.

Scialatielli

Cover the dough tightly with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Divide the dough into halves and roll out each half into a sheet about 3 mm (1/6 inch) thick. [NB: This corresponds to Setting 2 or 3 on most pasta machines.] Cut the sheets into roughly 12-15 cm (5-6 inch) lengths, then cut each resulting sheet into strips no wider than 1 cm (1/3 inch).

Flour the strips well and set on a floured surface until needed.

Prepare the seafood sauce

Place your clams and mussels in a pot, along with a splash of white wine. Cover and simmer over a lively flame just until their shells have opened.

Remove the clams and mussels from the pot and, when they are cool enough to handle, shell them. (You can leave a few unshelled for decoration.)

In a large skillet, sauté the garlic along with the parsley stems (and, if using, the hot red pepper) gently in abundant olive oil until fragrant and just beginning to brown around the edges. Remove and discard the garlic and parsley stems, along with red pepper if used.

Pour in the juices from the clams and mussels, making sure to leave any sediment in the pot. Let the juices cook off until well reduced.

Now add the tomatoes and simmer for a couple of minutes, until they’ve softened. Add the shrimp and toss just until they cooked through, then add the shelled clams and mussels. Turn off the heat but keep warm.

Cook and dress the pasta

Bring a large pot of well salted water to the boil. Add the scialatelli and cook until ever so slightly undercooked, 3-4 minutes depending on their thickness.

Transfer the scialatelli to the skillet with the seafood and mix over gentle heat until the sauce clings to the pasta.

Serve immediately, sprinkled with more finely minced parsley and, if using, topped with the reserved unshelled clams and mussels.

Notes

To make your scialatielli, all the tips in our post on making fresh egg pasta apply. I’d just add that in my recipe testing, perhaps due to the unusual dough mixture, I found the dough had a tendency to break.

The way to avoid this is to make sure your dough is well kneaded, which will develop the gluten in the flour and strengthen the dough. Also, make sure that the dough is well hydrated, erring on the side of more liquid rather than less. While this may produce a slightly stickier dough, that shouldn’t be a problem so long as you keep the dough well dusted with flour as you roll it and cut it into strips. NB: Tell tale signs your dough is too dry: if it’s hard to knead (the dough should be quite soft to the touch) and develops ragged edges when you roll it out.

And now, here’s a special treat. Chef Cosentino himself showing you how to prepare scialatielli:

Scialatielli are one of the easier fresh pastas to make at home. That said, if you don’t feel up to it, there are alternatives. In Italy, in particular in the Naples area, you can easily find scialatielli, both fresh and dry, in supermarkets. Elsewhere, you can find them online. In the US, they’re sold on amazon.com. But be aware that commercially sold scialatielli are just your basic durum wheat pasta in the shape of scialatielli. Nice but not the same.

Choosing and prepping your seafood

For this dish—and pasta dishes in general—you want to use the smallest round clams you can find. In Italy the clams used for pasta are quite small, with thin shells. Large clams make for awkward eating on pasta if left unshelled, and their flesh is less sweet and tender than smaller ones. Here in the US, the smallest clams you will find most places are called ‘littlenecks’. Even if they’re larger and heavier than Italian clams, go with them.

Both clams and mussels can contain sediment. There are two schools of thought for dealing with it. The one I’m following in this recipe is to steam the clams and mussels in a separate pot and leave their sediment behind as you remove them and their juices. This works fine if your mollusks are relatively sediment free.

The other, which I’d recommend if your mollusks have heavy sediment, is to purge them of their sediment by soaking them in water which you’ve salted generously, preferably with sea salt. Recommended soaking times vary enormously, but 20-30 minutes would be an absolute minimum, with many recipes calling for an hour and some even 2-3 hours, with changes of water.

All depends, of course, on just how much sediment is inside. This is hard to tell without opening your mollusks, but heaviness is a tell-tale sign.

Of course, if you have the time, you could use a ‘belt and suspenders’ approach and do both.

Mussels, especially the wild ones, sometimes come with a ‘beard’. There is the cluster of filaments the mussel used to cling to whatever surface they lived on. They are easily trimmed off with a paring knife.

Variations

Take the dimensions for scialatielli given here—3mm thick, 1 cm wide and 12-15 cm long—as a guide. There’s no need to stress too much. Chef Cosentino himself says you play around with the dimensions of scialatielli to suit your own tastes. The thickness in particular can vary from recipe to recipe, anywhere from 3mm to 5mm. In my own recipe testing, I found 4-5mm (which corresponds to Setting 1 on my pasta machine) just a bit too thick and chewy for my taste. Setting 2 or even 3 turned out scialatielli much more pleasing—and closer to the scialatielli I enjoyed so much in Italy,

The ingredients for the dough don’t vary much, but most recipes you’ll find call for only 1 egg for 400g of flour. As you can see in the video Chef Consentino uses 2 eggs, so I’m going with the master.

As mentioned at the top, like many seafood pasta dishes, scialatielli ai frutti di mare can be made with or without tomato. The dish I enjoyed in Praiano was dressed with a full on tomato sauce in which the lobster was simmered. If you want to go that route, just substitute peeled canned tomatoes or passata for the cherry tomatoes, and double the measurement given here.

You can also add calamari to the seafood mix—in which case you can call your dish scialatielli allo scoglio. Add the cut up calamari to the pot right after you’ve sautéed the garlic. Let them simmer along with the juice from the clams and mussels until they are tender. If you are using baby calamari, this should only take perhaps 5-10 minutes, older calamari can take up to 15-30 minutes. Add water or white wine as needed to keep things moist. Then proceed with the cherry tomatoes.

Using a seafood mix

Admittedly the seafood sauce is a bit of a production. If you want to save yourself time and effort, feel free to use one of those seafood mixes you often find in the frozen foods section. Add the mix to the garlic-scented olive oil, let it simmer for a minute or two, then add a splash of white wine along with the tomatoes and simmer until done, following the timing instructions on the package. The texture and flavor won’t be as fine as if you had used fresh ingredients, of course, but your scialatielli will still be quite tasty indeed.

Other ways to dress scialatielli

While seafood is the most classic way to dress scialatielli, as mentioned at the top, they take to just about any sauce you might use to dress other long pastas. Among the summer sauces I enjoy are lightly sautéed fresh tomato and basil, a mix of tomato and zucchini or a mix of sautéed peppers and tuna. They are all delicious.

Scialatielli con frutti di mare

Scialatielli pasta with a mixed seafood sauce
Course: Primo
Cuisine: Campania
Keyword: pasta

Ingredients

To make the scialatielli

  • 400 g 14 oz semola rimacinata, finely ground semolina flour
  • 30 g 1 oz grated pecorino or parmigiano-reggiano cheese, or 50:50 mix of both
  • 2 eggs
  • 150 ml 5 fl oz milk, or as much as you need to form a soft, pliable dough
  • 2 Tbs olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • 3-4 basil leaves finely minced

For the seafood sauce:

  • 350 g 12 oz shrimp, shelled
  • 500 g 1 lb unshelled mussels
  • 12 unshelled clams
  • 350 g 12 oz cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic peeled and slightly crushed
  • olive oil
  • salt
  • A few sprigs of parsley finely minced and reserving the stems

Optional

  • A hot red pepper

Instructions

Make your scialatielli

  • In a standing mixer, add the flour, forming a well in the middle. Then add the rest of the dough ingredients except for milk into the well. Mix at a medium-high speed, drizzling in enough milk until the mixture forms a ball. Continue for another 5 minutes to knead the dough.
  • Remove the dough from the bowl of the standing mixer and place it on a well floured board. Using well floured hands, knead the dough ball by hand until perfectly smooth, elastic dough. It should be soft but not sticky.
  • Cover the dough tightly with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.
  • Divide the dough into halves and roll out each half into a sheet about 3 mm (1/6 inch) thick. [NB: This corresponds to Setting 2 or 3 on most pasta machines.] Cut the sheets into roughly 12-15 cm (5-6 inch) lengths, then cut each resulting sheet into strips no wider than 1 cm (1/3 inch).
  • Flour the strips well and set on a floured surface until needed.

Prepare the seafood sauce

  • Place your clams and mussels in a pot, along with a splash of white wine. Cover and simmer over a lively flame just until their shells have opened.
  • Remove the clams and mussels from the pot and, when they are cool enough to handle, shell them. (You can leave a few unshelled for decoration.)
  • In a large skillet, sauté the garlic along with the parsley stems (and, if using, the hot red pepper) gently in abundant olive oil until fragrant and just beginning to brown around the edges. Remove and discard the garlic and parsley stems, along with red pepper if used.
  • Pour in the juices from the clams and mussels, making sure to leave any sediment in the pot. Let the juices cook off until well reduced.
  • Now add the tomatoes and simmer for a couple of minutes, until they’ve softened. Add the shrimp and toss just until they cooked through, then add the shelled clams and mussels. Turn off the heat but keep warm.
  • Bring a large pot of well salted water to the boil. Add the scialatelli and cook until ever so slightly undercooked, 3-4 minutes depending on their thickness.
  • Transfer the scialatelli to the skillet with the seafood and mix over gentle heat until the sauce clings to the pasta.
  • Serve immediately, sprinkled with more parsley if you like.

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29 Comments on “Scialatielli con frutti di mare”

  1. Well that certainly is the perfect backdrop for a wonderful meal, Frank! I’m sure those will be memories that you cherish for life. 🙂 A new pasta, eh? I’m intrigued! And sometimes it’s fun to make a mess when you eat…as long as you aren’t wearing your nice shirt! Speaking of “new” pasta, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Dan Pashman’s “Cascatelli” – https://www.sfoglini.com/products/sporkful?sscid=81k8_8axz5&

    1. Ah, cascatelli… Well, I have heard of it. In fact, since I used to listen to Dan Pashman’s podcast pretty regularly I heard all about its development and birth. And I’ve seen it in in our local Whole Foods.

      I’ve been meaning to try it out of curiosity, but in all honesty I’m wary. The shape seems overly engineered, if you catch my drift. And when I saw them in the store, my first thought was “I don’t want to eat that.” I’m not terribly fond of pasta shapes with a lot of ridges—I’m not a fan of fusilli, for example. There’s also the fact that, because of the shape, it takes a very long time to cook, about 13-17 minutes, which suggests to me an overly thick pasta—also not a fan of those. But the cherry on top was the fact that he chose a name that he knew was grammatically incorrect (the actual Italian word is “cascatelle”) because he thought it looked/sounded more marketable. That rubbed me the wrong way.

      As you might guess, Italians to the extent they’ve heard of cascatelli, don’t think much of it. Here’s an article in the Italian Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.it/alfredo/marille-rigacuori-cascatelli-abbiamo-proprio-bisogno-di-nuovi-formati-di-pasta/881682/. (The “stuff of nighmares” for Italians, the author says. I wouldn’t go quite that far…)

      Have you tried it?

      1. I haven’t tried it myself, and I wasn’t aware of the fact that he chose a grammatically incorrect name just for marketability purposes. That alone is enough to make me not buy a box!

  2. Scialatielli? Another type of pasta I’ve never heard of! And while I’m not that enthusiastic to make homemade pasta in the foreseeable future, I do love this seafood tomato sauce. It sounds so good!

    1. Not enthusiastic about making homemade pasta? You surprise me, Ben! You were on a pasta roll for a while there… Anyway, this really is one of the easiest of homemade pastas to make, so if you ever do get the urge, this would be a good place to start. Otherwise, the sauce would work quite nicely with spaghetti—in fact, as you might know it then becomes a quite well known dish called spaghetti also scoglio—or another long pasta.

  3. Frank, my husband and I, along with 3 other couples, spent two weeks at a rented villa in Praiano several years ago. Wonderful memories!

  4. Why can Mark comment and I can’t? Sounds like we will need to have words later. I just told him we are making this next week — it reminds me of a favorite of mine (maybe from the same region?): spaghetti allo scoglio, but with a fun new pasta!

      1. Frank, Frank, Frank… you need to stop making dishes that are so wonderful that I make all your stuff instead of mine! Kidding aside, this is truly a wonderful dish. Just made it for brunch today (was supposed to be for dinner but I forgot we made plans to eat out after a matinee). It was perfect — I made half a recipe — just for the two of us — and used shrimp, clams, and mussels. I cannot wait to make it again. It’s such an unusual pasta dough — it makes me wonder how else it can be used. Thanks for a new favorite.

        I was amused by David’s (Spiced) question about cascatelli. You may remember I was given a box and tried them. They were fine. The funny thing is that I like pasta shapes made for specific sauces, not one pasta to cover all sauces. That is one of the joys of Italian cuisine!

        1. You’re too kind, David! But I agree that this pasta is a winner. And totally agree about pasta. One size definitely does not fit all!

  5. That looks absolutely amazing! I adore all seafood dishes nut this one looks especially intriguing because of the homemade pasta. I can imagine how delicious this must have been overlooking the sea.

    1. Go for the smallest you can find. The flesh is sweeter and more tender. And yes, that was meant to be 12 aka one dozen. Oops.. corrected!

  6. How rare to be able to trace a pasta form to a specific origin. The flecks of basil would be wonderful with seafood. It’s nice to see fresh tomatoes used with seafood with restraint (sometimes I encounter a thick pasty tomato sauce that overwhelms the delicacy of the seafood… but that’s my personal taste). Thanks for sharing this; now to convince the household chef to make it.

    1. I agree with you, which is why I prefer my seafood sauces “in bianco” or just with fresh cherry tomatoes as here. That said, the full on red dish I had in Praiano was superb. And good luck with the household chef—something tells me they won’t need much convincing..

  7. That’s a fabulous new recipe and messy or not, I will be making Scialatielli and I’ll keep my apron on at the table! I love the sound of lobster sauce, I had some fabulous home made lobster soup recently.

  8. The scialatielli look innocent enough but as you mentioned, they are a messy pasta like bucatini. I have an unopened box of bucatini in my pantry because every time I suggest eating them, my husband mentions how messy they are. Thanks for the warning because this dish does sound like it would be worth getting a little sauce on myself. 😊

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