Cicatielli with beans and mussels - Italian recipe

The cicatielli with beans and mussels is a tasty pasta recipe using ingredients from land and sea that enhance one another… tiny handmade dumplings in a creamy sauce of beans and mussels, a winning combination! Find this and many more recipes with pictures on the Giallozafferano App (in English)
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Start with making the dough for the pasta: take the semolina, a coarse type of flour made from durum wheat, add the water and the extra virgin olive oil to make it elastic. Transfer to a work surface and knead until smooth. Here it is. Wrap in cling film and let it rest in a cool place but not in the fridge, for at least half an hour.
Move on to the sauce, steam the mussels in a pan after they have been cleaned: pull out the byssus, or beard, that is a tuft of strong filaments protruding from between the valves, and scrub the shells clean to remove any impurities: I scrubbed them under running water with a clean pot scourer. The mussels are completely open, drain and allow to cool. In the meantime, prepare the rest of the dish: heat the oil in another pan, add the garlic – whole or crushed – and the chopped spring onion and chili pepper. Lower the heat to the minimum and cook until soft, it takes at least 10 minutes; if it’s browning too much, add a little of the mussel juices. Meanwhile shell the mussels.
When the spring onion has softened, add the cannellini beans, already cooked. Just to meld the flavours together. Salt and pepper. Take out half of the beans and transfer to a tall jar; leave the pan on the stove over a low heat, you don’t want them to get mushy. Add the mussel juices and puree with a stick blender. Return to the pan and move on to the cicatielli.
Firstly, divide the dough into small pieces and roll them into thin ropes; the cicatielli are tiny in size, as you can see. The cicatielli pasta comes from the Irpinia region and legend has it that a betrayed wife took out her anger on the dough instead of gouging out the eyes of her husband, in this way. It’s a time-consuming work that requires a lot of patience because the dumplings are really small.
It’s time to cook the pasta, add the salt to the boiling water and drop in the cicatielli. Cook for just a few minutes until firm to the bite, they will finish cooking in the sauce. If you love making homemade pasta, get hold of this drying tray, that allows the air to circulate around the fresh pasta so that it dries but does not stick to itself; once dried, you can store in a plastic bag in the freezer. When the pasta rises to the surface, drain and add to the sauce; finish cooking, then turn off the heat, add the mussels and the chopped parsley. I saved a few whole mussels for garnish. And while I’m plating up, let’s see together the ingredients needed for this recipe!
Ingredients
4 servings
For the cicatielli
- 1 ⅔ cups (280 g) of semolina
- ⅔ cup (150 ml) of water
- ½ tbsp (8 g) of extra virgin olive oil
For the sauce
- 2 ¼ lbs (1 kg) of mussels
- 1 cup (250 g) of cannellini beans
- 1 spring onion
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 chili pepper
- 1 ⅓ tbsp (20 g) of extra virgin olive oil
- 1 handful of chopped parsley
- 1 pinch of salt
- pepper to taste