F
Campanelle
The ruffled cone design of campanelle
means it’s especially good at grabbing
and holding on to thick sauces. Chef
Alfred Portale hand-makes the twists
before tossing them with a duck ragu
at his namesake Italian restaurant in
New York.Chili gigli
Gigli is another
name for campanelle,
which translates from
the Italian as “lily.” At
chef Jonathan Benno’s
restaurant Leonelli Taberna,
it’s flavored with Calabrian
chile and pimenton (smoked paprika)
and served fried as a bar snack. But
Benno says gigli can do double duty
in a more elaborate sauced dish
because its beautiful shape is well-
suited to high-end platings.Spirulina
garganelli
Fabio Trabocchi is
expanding on classic
shapes at his Sfoglina
restaurants. Among
his experiments is
the natural additive spirulina,
most often used as a booster
for healthful juices and shakes.
The algae adds beta carotene
and a light herbal note to the pasta
strands and tints them a pretty bluish-
green color.Chestnut
maltagliati
The hard-to-pronounce shape
translates as “badly cut” in Italian
and was originally made from
scraps of leftover tagliatelle.
Key to it are the uneven edges
and sizes. Trabocchi dresses
his up by folding chestnut
powder into the dough
for a woodsy, hearty
sweetness. Doppio tortelloni has
two separate fillings,
instead of one, at chef
Secchi’s RezdoraThe
Gluten-
Free
Option
Pasta made from chickpeas
could double as a Rorschach
test. Gluten-free diners see
it as an opportunity to eat
a beloved food they were
formerly denied; purists
regard it as a mealy-textured
affront to wheat.
The increased demand
for gluten-free products—
the market is projected to
be $15 billion by 2026—has
made the rise of chickpea
pasta inevitable. At Electric
Lemon, which advertises
“clean cuisine” in New York’s
Equinox Hotel, it is one of
the most popular dishes
when it’s on the menu.
And for home cooks, the
biggest name is Banza,which has expanded its line
to 16 shapes, with plans to
create more. It’s now not
only the fastest-growing
legume-based pasta, but also
the fastest-growing pasta
category overall, period, at
Whole Foods and Target.
Even traditionalists
such as Fabio Trabocchi
are coming around at
least partly to the idea.
At Sfoglina, he makes his
by grinding, then drying
protein-rich chickpeas in the
oven to make flour. But he
cheats just enough: To make
the noodles more pliable,
Trabocchi adds semolina,
which means they’re not
really gluten-free.OOD SPECIAL