Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Ravioli e agnolotti fatti in casa

I haven't posted a recipe in a long time.. shame on me! So, I'll try to correct this by talking about something really great that Lucas and I made with Nicola recently: homemade ravioli and agnolotti! Making stuffed pasta is a little more time consuming than making tagliatelle, but it's fun if you're with friends... and you can be proud of the result: :)
We made Ravioli ai formaggi con crema di zucca (Cheese ravioli with butternut squash cream) and Agnolotti al salame con salsa di pomodoro (Salame agnolotti with tomato sauce)
Recipes and more pictures follow!

Pasta dough:
Prepare a dough similar to the one we used for tagliatelle. You can use less eggs and more water, since there's going to be a filling and the pasta doesn't need to be as rich: Nicola's (i.e. Luisa's :) ) recipe was 2 eggs and 2 half egg shells filled with water for 2 1/2 cups flour. Knead till elastic, then pass it through your pasta machine as shown here, till you get many layers of thin dough. For agnolotti you should get to the thinnest setting on the machine, whereas for ravioli, you should leave it a bit thicker.

Ravioli preparation:
Place one sheet of dough on the ravioli shaper, and add a small amount of filling to each hole:
>Humidify with some water the parts that will become ravioli borders, to make them sticky. Then, cover with another sheet of dough:
Pass a rolling pin on this whole thing. The pressure on the borders will cut the ravioli. At this point, you can remove them from the ravioli maker, and place them on a tray.

Agnolotti preparation:
Cut ~3*3 inches squares of pasta. Stuff them with a little filling. Fold the square over the filling, to make a triangle. Fold the upper corner on pasta over the filling, and fold the other two corners around one of your fingers. This will make the agnolotto shape. Sorry, no picture for an individual agnolotto, but you can see here a closeup of the shapes:


Ravioli ai formaggi con crema di zucca (Cheese ravioli with butternut squash cream)
Prepare ravioli as described above. The cheese filling is made by mixing approximately 1/2 lb ricotta, 1/2 cup gorgonzola cheese and 1/2 cup cream cheese (this should be enough for dough made with ~2 1/2 cups flour, very approximatively, sorry about this). To make the sauce, cut a butternut squash into small cubes. Finely cut half a big onion. Sautee the onion, and after ~ 2 min add the squash. Add salt. Cook for ~10 min, covered. Then, add ~2 cups vegetable broth (or water and a bouillon, like I did) and cook covered for ~40 min, until the squash is soft. Puree with a blender. Add ~2 tbsp heavy cream, and pepper to taste.

Agnolotti al salame con salsa di pomodoro (Salame agnolotti with tomato sauce)
Prepare agnolotti as described above, using a filling made with ~ 1 cup finely cut salame mixed with ~1/2 lb cream cheese (dose for ~2 1/2 cups flour, very approximatively, sorry about this again). Prepare the tomato sauce: sautee half a big vidalia onion in olive oil, add 1 lb canned tomatoes, ~2 tsp salt, ~1/2 tsp of sugar, cover with a lid. After ~30 min, blend, add finely cut basil and leaves of sage.

Once everything is ready, bring a large amount of water to boil, add salt and a bit of olive oil to the water, then add the ravioli and agnolotti in, a little bit at a time. They will be cooked in ~5 min. Mix with the sauces and serve immediately!!

This will be also my entry for this week Presto Pasta night! At last I have some pasta worth presenting. :)

5 comments:

Nora B. said...

Marta, you are forgiven for the lack of recipes lately - these look terrific! I still don't have a pasta machine, so I am still making pseudo ravioli using wanton sheets...shame on me!

chemcookit said...

Eheh, thanks! I'm sure the pseudo ravioli are good too... probably harder to prepare, if you have to fold each of them by hand, so, if you get the machine, you'll be a master in no time!

Ruth Daniels said...

All the pictures are lovely and it looks like you had a wonderful time. So glad you chose to share with Presto Pasta Nights - we've missed you!

Check back for the roundup a little later.

Cara said...

I love my butternut squash inside my ravioli, I never thought to try it as a sauce! Thanks for the wonderful idea :)

angie said...

Ciao Marta :) Gli agnolotti in particolare sono splendidi. Se avessi la sfogliatrice mi lancerei adesso!
besitos