FANCY PASTA AND NOT

WHENEVER I prepare a holiday meal, I often "rehearse" some of the dishes. Making home made pasta is tricky enough but when you are really ambitious and want to do something completely over the top, a bit of practice helps. 

I have been wanting to make Tortellone for the longest time and because I made some ricotta yesterday and didn't have any spinach in the house, I decided to saute some baby kale and process that in the Cuisinart with the ricotta, mortadella and some Grana Padano for the filling. Here is how they turned out!

Tortelloni and Tortellini

I have to confess that the photograph is a bit stylized and I should point out that the white stuff that looks like snow is actually rice flour (it doesn't stick like regular floor and is perfect for allowing the pasta to dry before packaging for freezing, which is what I did). 

What you need to do is roll out a pasta sheet and then very precisely - with a ruler - measure out the strips and then squares to cut for each piece. Excess pieces from the 3 inch wide strips can be cut into maltagliatti (badly cut) to be used in brodo (broth), which could possibly look like this:

MALTAGLIATTI

Or you could cut them along the long strips and wind up with quite a few very attractive Pappardelle:

PAPPARDELL

A good tortelloni should measure 3 square inches and a tortellini should be half that size (which is much more difficult to maneuver!). Tortelloni is normally filled with ricotta or squash or any kind of combination of vegetable and cheese (be creative!) and the classical tortellini is almost always filled with veal, prosciutto and mortadella. 

Un Tortellone

As you can see from the photograph above, place the filling in the center of the square. Dip you finger in a small cup of milk and moisten two sides of the square, immediately fold over the other two sides forming a triangle making sure that there is no air in the filling sack. Moisten two corners of the triangle and fold the tortelloni in a circle so the two corners meet. Press them together and hold together while folding over the other corner to make a large belly button as seen in the first picture of this entry.

Place each tortellone on a tray lined in rice flour and let them dry. If you're not going to cook them that day, Refrigerate until completely cold and them put the tray in the freezer until they are frozen. Only then are frozen, they won't stick to each other in the bag. They will keep in the freezer for us to 3 months.

Of course, it goes without saying that these gorgeous morsels should be prepared with panna (the Italian word for cream) - the traditional way to serve tortellini is in brodo. The marriage of cream, butter and cheese, however, is definitely the way to go with the larger counterpart!

For four servings of tortelloni you'll need 1 cup of heavy cream, 2-3 tbl. unsalted butter and 1/2 cup Parmiggiano, heated together until well incorporated and thickened. Cook the tortelloni in lots of salted water, drain and bathe in the cream and serve immediately.
Buon appetito.