Gluten-free tortellini?

The first time I tried to deal with rice flour, some of the dough got stuck to the rolling pin and the day after the latter was bent forever. I could never use it again.

This is a chronicle of a partial success or that of a partial failure. But we must see the half glass full, right?

My mistake was to use cold water, the first time. I got something in between a rock and wet sand.
Today the water was boiling hot and the flour, although without gluten, managed to become somewhat sticky. I have been reading many recipes about Chinese dumplings and somewhere in the way I got this information.
I'm not sure about the cemical process, I guess the starch becomes somehow a gel and gets easier to be worked.

Yield: max 2 servings (it was an experiment!)

For the dough, I used the following:

• 1 cup of rice flour
• 1 spoon of potato starch
• 1 spoon of sunflower oil
• 1 pinch salt
• 4/5 of a cup of boiling water

Mix the flours, salt and oil in a bowl with a fork. Then pour the water. Stir using the fork, unless you want to spend some time in the hospital with 3rd degree burns.
Once you get a somewhat sticky mass, you can try and use your hands. It will be warm.
Make a ball and cover with plastic foil to avoid it dries.

For the stuffing, I used the vegan one given previously.

Dust the board and, with a rolling pin, make a sheet and cut in 3cm squares.

The dough is very delicate. I broke it straight away in the middle.
I collected the bits around the squares and made another ball, which I worked again with the rolling pin. This time, it was cold and more resistant.
So, make sure the dough has got cold before you make the sheet.
6/10 of a millimeter, as required for traditional tortellini, was too thin a thickness. I managed to close them, but I had less problems with a part that was a couple of millimeters. 

The tortellini I made look extremely delicate on the board. I wonder how to cook them. I guess steaming them would not destroy their delicate skin, or maybe they could be deep-fried. I wonder what happens in the broth.

Next time, I will be more precise.

Vegan tortellini

In structural semiotics there is a very important distinction between variants and invariants, as stated by L. Hjelmslev.
The analysis of a text can sometimes be hard when we want to determine the importance of a given expression and one tool is to change one of its terms in order to understand what happens to the meaning of the text itself. When we have commutation, that is a change in the meaning of the given text, that term is an invariant. Otherwise, we have a substitution, a variant.
More specifically, a variant can be free, leading to variations or localized, giving us varieties.

Making order in the world of Italian pasta is a true brainteaser, as each region, if not each city, has its own kind of recipe and shape and many times they share the same name.
The question is: what is a tortellino? What a tortellone?

The recipe for the stuffing of bolognese tortellini has been deposited and it's that I gave you on the first article. So it should be clear that true tortellini are only those made following those rules. At the same time, each shop and each family that produces them in the Bologna and Modena area has its own recipe. They are, in fact, varietes. They always contain Parma ham, Mortadella, Parmigiano Reggiano, nutmeg and eggs. And yet, the proportions vary even greatly.

I took the freedom to call the other recipes given as tortellini, although this approach would not really be orthodox. They are, in fact, variations as they are free interpretations of the concept of tortellini.

In Italy, outside of Bologna and Modena, you can find many shops that sell "tortellini" although the size, the shape and the stuffing are completely different from the traditional ones. Because the concept of tortellini is less rooted. That is, as L. Hjelmslev would put it, because the text has been cut differently and it now includes a wider range of dialects.

To make a long story short, just augment the width and thickness of tagliatelle (i.e. dimensions) and they are no longer perceived as such: they have become pappardelle. Cut a square of pasta sheet 6cm wide (instead of 3cm) and put the required stuffing and you get a tortellone instead of a tortellino. These are commutations that explain what an invariant is.

From now on, then, I will take as primary characters to name pasta the shape and the size, leaving aside the composition of the dough and that of the stuffing, when present.

I started with this introduction because today I present a recipe for vegan tortellini, so not only is the stuffing completely different from the original one, but also the dough falls "outside of the rule". Sfoglia bolognese requires one egg every 100gr of flour, as stated previously. Taking the eggs away doesn't give us a strictly traditional product, but I need to name somehow what I make.
As the desinence "-ino" means small, and the etymology of "tortello/ino" seems to some take origin from the act of the torsion given to the dough, I will call them tortellini.
This blog is meant for people outside of Italy, so the interpreting community has a wider acceptance of what a tortellino is.

Yield: 2-3 servings.

Here's the recipe for the dough:

• 150gr flour
• 70ml water
• 1 spoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 2gr curry powder

And here's for the stuffing:

• 1 can of red beans, drained 240gr
• 3 garlic cloves
• rosemary
• thyme

 Mix the beans with the other ingredients in a blender.

For the broth, you can use the vegetable version given before.