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Cappelletti (Caplét)

It is worth pointing out that every family in Reggio follows its own tradition with its own ingredients

Traditional Food Product

With regard to the shape of this noble pasta, there is a curious and amusing legend which finds its origin in the verses of the "Secchia Rapita" by Alessandro Tassoni which tells of an amorous night spent by Bacco, Venus and Mars in a tavern at Castelfranco Emilia. In the morning, according to Tassoni, Bacco and Mars head off for Modena.

However, at the beginning of the 1900s, a certain Giuseppe Ceri, Bolognese by adoption but born in Florence, published the sequel to the licentious story; he recounted that after the night of love-making, while Bacco and Mars head off for Modena, Venus remains in her room where innkeeper host enters to inform her that the Goddess's two amorous friends will only return for dinner. At this point the innkeeper is struck by Venus's navel which he defines as "divine and peculiar".
Returning to the kitchen, the innkeeper "imitating Venus's navel, learnt the art of making tortellini" and, if we really insist, our cappelletto can, for its shape, be compared to Venus's navel.
Now let's turn to the filling for cappelletti from Reggio.

Ingredients

(one of the traditional versions)

for the filling:
2 small onions
150 g of butter
70 g rib of beef or other beef provided tasty ham mixture
60 g of fillet or pork meat
90 g of veal or turkey or chicken
Liver and rigalie
1 clove of garlic to taste
Nutmeg
Breadcrumbs
Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

How to do

In a saucepan, melt the butter with onion, salt and pepper. Cut the meat into pieces and pour in the butter, cover and cook slowly with yellow paper. When the pieces are gently cooked, but not dried out, finely chop everything. Add a whole egg, bread crumbs, and three handfuls of grain. The grain component is of primary importance , so it will be very tasty and fragrant. Remember: The bread crumbs with a pinch of nutmeg, must be, above, roasted with the seasoning of the meat. The variants pesto are the addition of a sausage or a slice of mortadella minced. Even the replacement of the butter with the beef bone marrow and the addition of cloves. The Cappelletti should be cooked in a soup with broth.