Not for vampires - Tailed tortelli with cauliflower and feta cheese (and a lot of garlic)

I like very much cauliflower, its taste is delicate and is perfect with garlic, my favorite plant. In this very quick dish, I left both in chunks to fully enjoy the crunchiness of the first and the scent of the latter. Together with feta cheese, they make a light version of stuffing.

Yield:4-6 servings

Dough

• 400gr flour
• 2 eggs
• water
• some salt

Stuffing

• 300gr cauliflower, boiled and pan fried with oil and garlic
• 200gr feta cheese

As usual, put the stuffing on 7cm squares of pasta sheet.

Boil in salted water, the season with some extra-virgin oil and cream. Garnish with dill.

Looking like a fish: tailed tortelli, cauliflower, salmon and sunflower seeds

In the first restaurant where I worked in Warsaw I proposed to make tailed tortelli with a fish stuffing. They look like small fishes, I thought, so they will be a perfect dress for a fish stuffing. Here's a different recipe, let's get over the past!

Yield:4-6 servings

Dough

• 400gr flour
• 2 eggs
• water
• some salt

Stuffing

• 300grsmoked salmon
• 300gr cauliflower, boiled and pan fried with oil and garlic
• 100gr sunflower seeds

Stuffing on 7cm square of pasta sheet.

Cook in salted boiling water. Season with some good quality extra-virgin olive oil and lime slices.

Tortelli with the tail

This week we'll see some variations around the traditional tortello from Piacenza, a city in Emilia, closer to Milan then Bologna, although in the same region of the latter.
It's called con la coda because it has a small tail at the end. I've always enjoyed it on Christmas time. My father's family is from Piacenza and, because I'm vegetarian, they always bought a huge box of these tortelli.
They literally melt in your mouth and it's hard to stop eating them.
The dough for the pasta is different from that from Bologna: there is some salt and water. The stuffing changes, too: there is a lot more spinach (or herbs).

Yield: 4-6 servings

Dough

• 400gr flour
• 2 eggs
• water
• some salt

Stuffing

• 300gr ricotta
• 300gr spinach (or herbs or chard) leaves, boiled, squeezed and thinly chopped
• 200gr Grana Padano, grated
• salt
• nutmeg

Put the stuffing on 7-8cm squares of pasta sheet.

Put the square on your left hand, fold the corner facing you upwards with your right thumb. Then, alternatively with the index and the thumb, gently fold the pasta to close the stuffing in.

Cook in boiling salted water, when they float, drain and season with melted butter and grated Grana Padano.

Pizzoccherone - The last big tortellone

When yesterday I was making a giant tortellone, or maybe just a tortellone (let's hope that Accademia della Crusca contacts me...) with cabbage and cheese, just before biting the first bite, I realized that that stuffing had so much in common with Pizzoccheri that I could make them stuffed.
Pizzoccheri are traditional in Valtellina, and they're made of buckwheat flour and some wheat flour.
I'm very happy that my last gluten-free recipe for pasta worked. And it worked for this, too.

Yield: 6 servings

Dough

• 300gr buckwheat flour
• 150gr potato starch
• 150gr corn starch
• oil
• boiling water

Stuffing

• 500gr mashed potatoes, seasoned with oil and salt to taste
• 150gr cabbage, cut in chiffonade, stir fried with oil and garlic
• 100gr Casera Valtellinese, cut in cubes

Cook in boiling salted water, then add green beans. Here, there's beer sauce, too.

Yet another giant - Cabbage and provolone Giant tortellone

Potato and cabbage go very well together. Just add provolone and you can taste a melting strong taste you can't find anywhere else.


Yield: 6 servings

Dough:

• 200gr flour
• 2 eggs

Stuffing

• 600gr potato, boiled, peeled and mashed with oil, salt and pepper to taste
• 300gr cabbage, cut in chiffonade, stir fried with oil and garlic
• 200gr Provolone piccante, cut in cubes

Always the same: 15cm square of pasta sheet. The mashes potatoes, cabbage leaves and cheese. That's that simple!

Aglio olio e peperoncino here, no more.

Giant tortelloni with artichoke and gorgonzola

I wish it was easier to get fresh artichokes in Poland. Actually, I find it impossible. During this time, back in Italy you could find the last specimen. Here, you can be happy if you find them in jars. I'm kind of happy I got them, actually, but I could be much more.
As you have seen, this week is dedicated to size and simplicity. Potatoes are easy to find, they're cheap and tasty and they go well with almost anything.

Yield: 6 servings

Dough:

• 200gr flour
• 2 eggs

Stuffing

• 600gr potato, boiled, peeled and mashed with oil, salt and pepper to taste
• 18 quarters of artichokes in oil
• 180gr Gorgonzola in cubes

Potatoes, then artichokes and Gorgonzola cubes on 15cm square of pasta

Make giant tortelloni

Cook in boiling salted water, drain and toss in a frying pan with some browned butter. Grate some Parmigiano or Grana on top and garnish with parsley and dill.

A big quickie - Giant tortelloni with feta cheese and garlic

Here's a quick and very easy recipe for a stuffing, yet very tasty.
After all, there are times we don' want to do more than chop a vegetable. This time you've got to chop just two...

Yield: 6 servings

Dough:

• 200gr flour
• 2 eggs

Stuffing

• 600gr potato, boiled, peeled and mashed with oil, salt and pepper to taste
• 300gr feta cheese
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• dill, finely chopped

Spread the stuffing in the center of a 15cm square of pasta, starting from the mashed potato.

Once again, make a giant tortellone.

Cook in boiling salted water. Season with extra-virgin olive oil, grated pistachio nuts and grated orange zest.

Call any vegetable - Vegan giant tortelloni with potatoes and mushrooms

The vegan option for the giant thing that  I want to become tortellone and set up a different semantic about pasta making is still based on a potato stuffing. Yet the dough is this time made with Manitoba flour, something completely not italian, from Canada even.

But if you don't use eggs, you'll need some extra strength, and that is assured by a lot of gluten. Thus Manitoba.

Yield: 6 servings

Dough

• 200gr flour
• water
• oil

Stuffing

• 600gr boiled potatoes, mashed, peeled and seasoned with oil and salt
• 200gr mushrooms, stir fried with onion and garli, sprinkled with chopped parsley

Put potatoes, then mushrooms.

Close on 15cm pasta sheet.

Cook in salted boiling water, then season with a rough pesto made with walnuts, rosemary and garlic . Top with with cranberries and parsley.

Sweet giant - Giant tortelloni with ricotta, caramelized red onion and poppy seeds

I was planning to use sweet potatoes for this week's sweet alternative, but unfortunately it was impossible to find them. The recipe would have been quite different, but I'll leave it for future proposals.
So I used some of the ricotta I had left in the fridge and adjusted the stuffing accordingly. The inspiration came from the jam made from red onions of Tropea that too I couldn't find nor did I have time to make. But as we know, by using the Maillard reaction we can turn our onions to something sweet.

Yield: 4-6 servings

Dough

• 200gr flour
• 2 eggs

Stuffing

• 500gr ricotta
• 3 red onions thinly chopped and gently fried in oil until very soft
• poppy seeds

Put ricotta, then onion and top with poppy seeds on 15cm squares of pasta sheet.

Cook in lightly salted water, then toss in a frying pan with caramelized apple slices. Sprinkle with powdered cinnamon.

In search of a bigger name: giant tortellone or just tortellone?

When I was working for Biagi, in Bologna, we had to make for the restaurant at least 5kg of Biagini every week. They are tortellini so small you can't imagine. You don't want to figure yourself making them. Unless you love this job of course.
We, me and my two colleagues, once had to make 26kg of them in three days for a wedding.
Imagine going to sleep and dream you're closing tortellini. Then you wake up and you go to do it for real.

As said before, in italian -ino (or -ina for female) is the desinence for a small thing, whilst -one (or -ona) for a big one.
So the medium sized thing would be a tortello.
There isn't such a thing. You can find it, but most of the time is a raviolo.
One day we'll see the difference.

What happens if you add some centimeters to the pasta square you are cutting?
There is already around a thing called Raviolone. It's a big raviolo of course.
So how can you call a very big tortellone? Tortelloneone?
What if it becomes a tortellone, and what we once called tortellone becomes a tortello?

Yield: 6 servings

Dough

• 200gr flour
• 2 eggs

Stuffing

• 600gr of potatoes, cooked and peeled
• 6 egg yolks
• 6 slices of your favorite cheese
• chive, thinly chopped
• salt
• pepper
• oil

Mash the potato and add some oil or butter to make it creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Put the slice of cheese, the puree, the chive and the yolk on a 15cm sheet of pasta.

Make a tortelloneone (ora just a tortellone?)

Cook in boiling salted water. Toss in a frying pan with some oil and mushrooms. Grate some Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana on the top.

For special effects, open it from the center, to see the running yolk coming out.

Gluten-free almost for free

If you have read "Modernist Cuisine", you can find plenty of recipes that involve the use of xantham gum and other very interesting products that cost a lot of money.
What I like about pasta, apart from the taste of course, it's that it is cheap. Why would I make a dish that cost me 20 times more when I can find a cheaper solution on the shelves of a normal shop? After all, as they teach in that big book, it's about chemistry.
Let's remember that pasta, as well as pizza (the first version, fried in pork fat on the street corners) was peasants' food. They would have not spent half of their month income to give food to their gluten-intolerant friend. Yet they would have found a solution to feed him or her that would guarantee them to do it again the day after because they could afford it.

My solution is once again starch. This time I mixed potato and corn starch with boiling water and buckwheat flour. I worked the dough very quickly and made a sheet with the rolling pin. Unlike the first time for tortellini, when I found out that a cold dough would be better to work. Of course, the result is different from what I consider as Quality pasta. I've been taught to make the pasta sheet as thin as possible. But compromise sometimes is not a bad concept. In Bologna they say "rather than nothing, it's better rather".

Yield: 4-6 people

Dough

• 300gr buckwheat flour
• 150gr potato starch
• 150gr corn starch
• oil
• boiling water

Stuffing

•  350gr ricotta
• 150gr Gorgonzola
• salt
• pepper 

The stuffing is quite easy to make: mix ricotta and gorgonzola with a fork and some salt and pepper to taste.

Forget about a thin sheet of pasta and put little stuffing on each 6cm wide square.

Close quickly as long as the dough is warm. It will soon become a piece of frail wood.

Boil in salted water and toss in a frying pan with cream.
Grate some Parmigiano or Grana on top and add some walnuts.

Thick as a brick - Almost-gluten-free tortelloni

For U.Eco when we face a text we respond to it by interpreting the pictured world in comparison to the one we live in. It's called the "theory of possible worlds".
I lack of fantasy: I can't imagine a world without pasta. Sometimes I don't even want to hear about it. I don't want to cook it, I'd never make it. But still I could never say "nevermore".
I remember I read once about a study (I can't guarantee how serious it was, I had news of it on a newspaper) that said Italians get depressed if they don't eat pasta for more than a week. Although it is a very stereotypical assessment, there must be some truth in it.

Because I can't think a pasta-less world, I always wonder how to make it eatable for eveybody.

The first week I tried almost successfully to make tortellini with rice flour. Today the flour came from buckwheat and the pasta tortelloni. Still it didn't quite work. I had to make a fix.
When we make a castle with sand on the seashore, we rely on the water to keep the grains stuck together.
Buckwheat flour was the same. As long as it was wet, it was looking smooth. But I couldn't make a sfoglia with it.
So I added some flour (normal) and some water and used the gluten. Again.

Yield: 4-6 people

Dough

• 250gr buckwheat flour
• 150gr flour
•  water

Stuffing

• 4 bananas (more or less 400gr in total)
• 200gr dates (without the seed)

 With a fork, make a paste of the banana. Sprinkle with lemon juice to avoid it darkens.
Cut the dates in small pieces (or mince them if you're in a hurry).

Put the stuffing on 6cm wide squares of pasta. You can't make it thin this time: it would destroy.

Make tortelloni and dust them copiously with the flour.

If you have one, put them on a rack.

 Cook them in lightly salted boiling water.
Toss them in a pan with some oil and some vegetable cream.
Dust them with grated chocolate and coconut powder.