When we made the Broccoli Strascinati the other day, we had no idea what strascinati meant, so we figured that we’d simply search for it and find out. Well, it turns out that strascinati is related to the Italian word for dragged. Hmm. Who knew? But, it also turns out that strascinati refers to a particular shape of pasta, and it’s one that scratchers can make by hand. Naturally, we’ll show you how so that you can add it to your ever growing list of pasta shapes.
Since this is all about shaping strascinati, we’ll just assume that you have a batch of fresh pasta dough rested and ready to shape. If not, feel free to whip up a batch of Basic Pasta Dough and come back in about a half-hour. We’ll be waiting patiently.
Okay, while we were waiting for you to get the dough together, we looked at several websites, studied up a bit on shaping strascinati, and we are off to the races. Out of 8 ounces of pasta dough (the amount our pasta recipe makes), you should get around 120 strascinati.
Make a pasta snake. Start by cutting off a small piece of pasta dough, probably at most, about an eighth of the dough (about an ounce), and roll it into a long snake. Just as when you learned how to make coiled-clay pots in grade school. Keep rolling the snake until it’s just about 1/4 inch around. If your snake gets too long, cut it in half, and use less dough next time.
Cut snake. Using a knife or bench scraper, cut the snake into inch-long pieces. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be exact; just come close to an inch.
Drag. Here’s the key to making strascinati: press your first three fingers onto a piece of dough and drag, really drag, the pasta dough across your work surface. The pasta will curl up around your fingers as you drag it, resulting in a curl of dough with three finger indents. Ideally, the pasta dough should be smooth on the outside and rough, from tearing, on the inside.
Dry. Place you newly formed strascinati on a towel-covered baking rack, and repeat all the steps, adjusting the amount of dough and applied pressure until you’re done. While you can use the pasta immediately, we like to let it dry for about an hour before cooking. It makes the pasta less likely to clump together.
Cook. Boil your strascinati just like regular pasta — in a lot of salted water — keeping in mind that fresh pasta takes less time to cook up; ours took about 6 minutes.
Ah, it’s freshly-made pasta that you can produce without any special tools and it’s super easy to shape, so what’s not to love? Five stars.