For
the fresh pasta:
200 g all-purpose
unbleached flour (7.055 oz.; 1.60 c), 100 g semolina flour (3.527 oz.; .57 c),
3 eggs, a pinch of salt.
For the filling: 400 g
fresh sheep ricotta (.88 lb.; 3.25 c), 600 g spinach or chard (2-1/2 c), 3-4
TBSP grated Parmesan, a pinch of salt, ground nutmeg and black pepper to taste,
zest of one lemon or 1-2 TBSP marjoram leaves.
120 g butter (apx. ½ c), 1
large handful of fresh sage leaves, grated Parmesan.
Prepare the filling: start
by blanching the greens in just a little water (you don’t want them floating,
if using spinach you might even just cook them barely with the water left on
from washing them) for a few minutes. Drain them well and let them cool; when
cool enough to handle, squeeze them well from any extra water (a sushi mat
works very well for this purpose) and chop them very very finely. Drain ricotta
very well, then pass it through a sieve or work it with a wooden spoon to make
it smooth; mix it with greens, Parmesan, lemon zest or marjoram leaves if using, and season with salt, pepper
and nutmeg. Make a homogeneous and rather consistent mixture (it shouldn’t be
wet).
Sift flour on your working
surface into a mound and make a well in the center. Break in the eggs, add a
pinch of salt, and beat them lightly with a fork; gently draw in the flout
without allowing eggs to escape. Once eggs are rather mixed with flour and no
more running out, start to knead the dough, until it gets soft and elastic, and
doesn’t stick to your fingers anymore. Work with clean hands (brush off any dry
bits of flour) and eventually dust them with more semolina to avoid sticking.
After about ten minutes, once you have a smooth silky ball of dough, wrap it in
cling film or in a cloth and let it rest for 20 minutes. After this time, you
can roll the dough with a rolling pin or with the pasta machine. Divide the
ball in 2-3 pieces; keep covered the pieces you are not working on. If you are
using a rolling pin, roll the dough out on a floured board at 1-2 mm thickness
working from the center out, until you have an even surface. Either you are
using a rolling pin or the machine, it is important to work the dough well,
rolling and stretching. We used the machine, so we had the piece of dough
passing through the machine cylinders, at first through the thickest setting,
for 2-3 times, folding the dough over itself; then we kept moving on to next
settings, rolling the dough through each of them until the second thinnest
setting, in order to have thin sheets of dough. It’s possible to make long
stripes, about 10 cm large, then lay them on floured board and place small
mounds of filling evenly spaced apart (about 3 cm) all along the stripe; then
cover with another pasta stripe and press with your fingers all around the
filling, to let air out and seal the pasta. Generally it must be done quickly,
otherwise fresh pasta dries and it’s hard to close ravioli (eventually you can
brush the sides of the stripe with a little water of egg whites). Cut ravioli
out with a roller cutter, leaving about 1-2 cm of past around the filling.
Alternatively, you can make larger stripes, place the filling on the longer
side closer to you and fold the dough over onto the filling. Then proceed as
above to shape and cut ravioli.
Or you can use a round
cookie cutter (8-9 cm) to cut pasta circles, then spoon a heaping teaspoon of
the filling onto the bottom part of each circle of dough (slightly off the
center) and fold each circle over in half; then pinch the edges together with a
fork to seal ravioli. Arrange ravioli on a tray as you do them, sprinkled with
some semolina, without overlapping them, until you have used all of your dough.
Melt the butter to a golden
color into a pan with the shredded sage leaves, until they get crisp (or you
can bring the butter to noisette* for a deeper flavor). Cook ravioli in a large
pot of boiling salted water, for about 6 minutes. Remove them gently with a
slotted spoon and immediately add them to the pan to coat them well with the
scented butter. Serve with grated Parmesan on top.
* Unsalted butter is melted over low heat and allowed to separate into butterfat and solids from milk. The milk solids naturally sink to the bottom of the pan and, if left
over gentle heat, will begin to brown. As the milk solids reach a toasty
hazelnut color, the pan is removed from the heat. Beurre noisette may be used in its liquid state, or
cooled to a solid form. It has a nutty flavor.
