Cappelletti

A cappelletto is a square of egg pasta with a nut of filling in the middle, folded into a triangle, wrapped around a fingertip and then finished by turning the top edge upward into a brim. That upturned brim is the defining feature and the reason for the name: cappello means hat.

Size is the second difference. A cappelletto weighs five to ten grams; a Bolognese tortellino weighs two to five. A bowl of broth holds forty tortellini or twenty cappelletti.

The filling splits along a geographic line. Romagna (Forlì, Cesena, Ravenna, Rimini) makes them 'di magro', meatless: ricotta or raviggiolo, the soft local squacquerone, parmesan, egg, nutmeg and lemon zest. Emilia (Reggio, Modena, Ferrara, Piacenza) fills them with meat, usually pork with cured meats, which brings them much closer to tortellini.

They are eaten in broth, and the broth matters: capon at Christmas, otherwise a three-meat brodo of beef, hen and sometimes pork, simmered for hours. Served dry with sauce, they are traditionally what you do with the leftovers on Boxing Day.

The Romagna version is delicate and slightly perfumed: fresh cheese, a savoury lift from parmesan, then nutmeg and lemon zest arriving at the end. The lemon is not subtle once you know to look for it, and it is what stops the filling from tasting flat. Against a clear capon broth the whole thing is clean, rich and surprisingly light.

The Emilian meat version is deeper and rounder (cured pork, nutmeg, parmesan), closer to a tortellino, but with a bigger mouthful of filling relative to pasta because of the size.

The pasta itself should be thin enough to be almost incidental: soft, eggy, faintly sweet. Industrial versions get this wrong, using a thicker sheet that survives machinery and packaging and eats like a rubber band around the filling.

Cook them in the broth they will be served in. Bring the broth to a bare simmer, drop them in, and give them three to four minutes fresh or five to six from frozen. Boiling them separately in water and moving them across loses the starch that gives the finished bowl its body.

The broth is half the dish. Capon at Christmas; otherwise beef shin, half a hen, bones, celery, carrot and onion, four hours at the barest simmer, skimmed at the start, then strained and chilled so the fat can be lifted off.

Serve with grated parmesan and nothing else. No cream, no herbs, no drizzle.

Leftovers get eaten dry the next day, tossed in a pan with butter and sage until the edges catch and crisp. Modern restaurants also serve them dry with butter and parmesan or a light ragù, which is perfectly good and entirely beside the point of Christmas.

Fresh cappelletti from a chilled counter carry a short date, usually three to seven days from packing, and once the pack is open the pieces belong in a single layer on a tray dusted with semolina, loosely covered, not stacked in a bag where they stick to each other. Dried boxed versions keep to the best before date, a year or more, in a dry cupboard. Frozen packs hold two to three months and go into the broth straight from frozen with an extra minute or two.

The failure mode of a filled pasta is moisture moving from the filling into the dough. Left in the fridge, the pasta at the seam turns grey and translucent, softens, and eventually tears when it hits hot broth; a cheese filling weeps and the pieces flatten. This is why Emilian households freeze rather than refrigerate: spread them on a floured tray, freeze until hard, then bag them, and nothing sticks or leaks. Dried cappelletti go the other way and simply become brittle over time. For a specific pack, the printed date and the producer are the reference.

The name means little hats and the shape has to earn it: a disc or square of thin egg pasta folded to a triangle, wrapped round a fingertip and sealed, so the finished piece has an upturned brim and a peak standing above it. Flat, pinched or purse shaped pieces are something else. Look at the pasta itself against the light: it should be thin enough that the filling shows through as a shadow, with a matt, floury surface rather than a slick one, and the sealed edge should be pressed, not crimped by machine.

Abroad the word is used loosely for almost any small stuffed pasta, so read the filling. Romagna cappelletti are cheese: soft fresh curd with Parmigiano and nutmeg, sometimes lemon zest. The Emilian ones towards Reggio and Parma carry meat. Tortellini, which they are constantly confused with, are smaller, built from squares, and filled with pork loin, prosciutto and mortadella; tortelloni are much larger with ricotta and spinach. A pack listing breadcrumbs, potato or vegetable protein high in the filling is an industrial version. Fresh artisanal packs run $9 to $16 for 250 grams.

In the US, fresh and frozen cappelletti turn up in Italian delis and specialist grocers, though tortellini are far more common. Ask for cappelletti by name and expect the meat-filled Emilian style. Eataly and regional Italian markets in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago are the reliable sources, at 12 to 20 dollars a pound. Frozen is genuinely fine here: it is how Italian households store them too.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens carry them seasonally in December; Lina Stores and similar London shops make them fresh. Expect 14 to 25 pounds a kilo. Supermarket 'cappelletti' in the UK are usually a small ring pasta with a generic filling.

What to check: filling should be close to half the weight, the pasta sheet should be thin, and the ingredient list should not open with breadcrumbs. Deep yellow pasta comes from egg yolks: if the list includes colouring, the yolks were few.

Allow 70 to 90 grams per person for a bowl of broth.

December, and in houses before restaurants: in Romagna, folding cappelletti on the 23rd or 24th is a family operation involving three generations and one long table.

Forlimpopoli, Artusi's home town, has Casa Artusi (museum, cookery school and restaurant in one), which runs pasta-rolling courses year-round and is the best place to learn the fold rather than watch it.

In Bologna, the sfogline work in shop windows along Via Drapperie and the Quadrilatero, with cappelletti and tortellini side by side in the same case, which settles the difference in about thirty seconds. The old trattorie serve tortellini in brodo all year.

Parma and Piacenza are for anolini, the round beef-filled cousin, and Ferrara for cappellacci di zucca, which keep the hat shape and swap everything else for pumpkin.