passatelli, pressed parmesan dumplings from emilia-romagna
pasta of the month 016
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful festive season. I’m writing from drizzly London, where I’ve been spending a few days with family and enjoying my fair share of Indian food and mulled wine. And although I can’t believe it’s actually 2025, I can think of no better way to welcome another turn around the sun than with a big bowl of pasta.
Returning to our regularly scheduled programming, the first Pasta of the Month of 2025 is, admittedly, not really pasta at all. Passatelli—meaning “to pass them through”—are short, spaghetti-like dumplings made by passing (see what I did there?) a mixture of breadcrumbs, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and eggs through a perforated press. Still, although they lack the flour that makes pasta, well, pasta, they are so tasty and beloved that they “deserve to be an exception,”* and have been welcomed into the pasta canon with open arms.
Hailing from central Italy, and particularly the regions of Emilia-Romagna, the Marche, and Umbria, passatelli are widely considered an example of cucina povera, Italy’s illustrious legacy of peasant cooking—a way poor-yet-resourceful cooks transformed local, affordable ingredients into something satisfying and delicious. To be sure, hallmarks of cucina povera are at play here, the most obvious being the use of breadcrumbs instead of flour. Today bread is so common and so cheap that you’d be hard-pressed to find a pantry without it, but in rural communities it was once baked in shared ovens only once a week (and, in some areas, as infrequently as four times a year). So using every morsel of bread (particularly the coveted white bread called for here), no matter how small or stale, was common practice. Similarly, hard cheeses and eggs are generally accepted as staples of the peasant pantry. But I’m not so sure this is the full picture.
From all I’ve learned about Italian cooking over the years, and despite their rustic appearance, passatelli strike me less as scrappy leftovers and more as quiet luxury. My (perhaps flawed) reasoning is three-fold. First, passatelli are seasoned with grated nutmeg and/or lemon zest, depending on the region (in Umbria, lemon zest is a must). Nutmeg, like most spices, was certainly somewhat expensive, and lemons would have been imported from other areas, making them hard to come by. What’s more, the oldest variations of passatelli were enriched with melted bone marrow—hardly a poor cook’s everyday ingredient. Second, although eggs and Parmigiano-Reggiano were more readily available in places like Emilia-Romagna than down south, they were still, historically, pretty pricey. This is why fresh egg pasta was typically reserved for wealthier households and holidays—not to mention it would be hard not to splurge considering the sheer amount of Parmigiano needed to make passatelli. Finally, passatelli are traditionally served in some type of meat broth (brodo), a higher-cost preparation savored during festive occasions. All of this is to say that passatelli are a bit out-of-the-box, special enough to serve on Christmas and New Year’s Day, and comforting enough to be a pick-me-up on the coldest winter nights.
Just as striking as their ingredient list is how passatelli are made. Today I’m showing you how to press the strands using the more-accessible potato ricer, but the traditional tool is called “il ferro di passatelli,” or a passatelli iron. Similar to some spaetzle makers, a passatelli iron is a colander-like convex disc, perforated with 4 millimeter holes (this size is important, giving the passatelli their signature stout shape) and equipped with wooden handles on either side. Instead of extruding the dough by pushing it downward through the holes of a ricer—à la Play-Doh spaghetti—the iron is pressed on top of the dough, in a circular motion, forcing little strands to pop upwards. The passatelli are then cut loose and the process repeated before gently simmering them in broth. (Some cooks press and cut the pasta directly into the broth, but this is a bit of a faff and results in uneven cooking.) I don’t imagine many of us have a passatelli iron on hand, but if you also don’t have access to a ricer, a potato masher might work in a pinch.
As for serving, if you, like me, are in post-holiday recovery mode, I think you’ll appreciate that I’ve paired my passatelli with a nourishing vegetable broth. I’m calling it a “golden broth” for its lovely color, and its simplicity is a lazy introvert’s dream (I’m the lazy introvert): Hands-off, minimal prep, and ready in a couple of hours, it can be made ahead or easily timed to when you’re ready to cook your passatelli. Of course, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy these dumplings year-round. Today you’ll find them not only served in all manner of broths and soups, but also sauced with seafood, particularly clams, as well as with butter and truffles and a variety of cheeses, meats, and vegetables like porcini mushrooms, radicchio, and zucchini. It’s hard to go wrong with bread and cheese.
A few notes:
I’ve seen various textures of passatelli, some more refined and compact and some more rustic (okay, ugly-delicious) like these. The result will depend primarily on the breadcrumbs you use and how long the dough rests—but whatever the outcome, they’ll still taste yummy!
This recipe calls for equal parts breadcrumbs and Parmigiano-Reggiano. In the past, this ratio varied widely, with poorer families using a higher proportion of breadcrumbs and wealthier families using more cheese. Feel free to experiment!
Although it’s hard to beat homemade broth, you can, of course, swap in your favorite store-bought version. Or make your own chicken broth for a more traditional flavor.
*According to Oretta Zanini de Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta, with which I will never disagree.
Passatelli in Golden Vegetable Broth
Serves 4