Tortellini!

Hello! I'm Davide and I work as sfoglino. My job is to make pasta and I'd like to share with you my experience and passion.

 Everybody knows what spaghetti, tagliatelle and ravioli are. But could you make them yourself at home, starting from scratch? The purpose of this blog is toi help you doing it.

 Christmas has just finished and probably the most of you are on a diet to recover from all the food you ate, but maybe in a couple of weeks you'll feel hungry again and want to have a treat for your bellies. After all, it's winter!

Here's what I made for my family last week: tortellini.

Legend wants that they were invented by a sfoglino in Castelfranco (between Bologna and Modena) who had seen Venus naked. As he couldn't forget the bauty of her, he made this pasta that resembles her navel.

We start from the dough.I follow the traditional recipe from Bologna, that forbids anything else than flour and eggs. In other regions of Italy the ingredients may vary, so you could put water, oil, salt.
For each 100gr of flour there's one egg. For 4-6 people 300gr and 3 eggs will be enough provided that you make a thin layer.

 

 

After the kneading, the dough will look smooth and elastic. We make a ball and let it rest for twenty minutes. During this time the gluten will develop, giving the dough the necessary strength it needs to be worked.

Using a rolling pin, we make a foil as thin as we can in the shortest possible time, to avoid drying of pasta.

Finally, we cut the pasta in squares 3cm wide and put the stuffing on each of them.We fold each square to make a triangle, pressing on the sides to close the filling and wrap the tails around the finger.

You should make the stuffing the day before in order to develop the best possible taste.

The recipe for 4-6 people is the following:

•     50gr pork loin
•     10gr butter
•     100gr mortadella
•     75gr Parma ham
•     50gr grated Parmigiano Reggiano 36 months
•     1 egg
•     salt
•     nutmeg
•     white wine

Cook the pork meat in the butter for a few minutes at low fire. Add wine and salt. When you no longer smell the alcohol evaporating, take away from the stove.

Mince the meat with the other ingredients. Add the egg, salt and nutmeg and stir.

Put in the fridge, well covered so it doesn't dry.

Traditionally, tortellini are cooked in a broth made with pork, beef and chicken meat along with onion, celery and carrot (and some salt of course). Cover with water and put on a very low fire. The longer it cooks, the better the result.

 Once the broth is ready, filter it, pour the tortellini and wait until they start to float.

Serve hot.

Alternatively, you may just cook them in cream. But this would be considered as blasphemy by a truly bolognese...