Tortelli with Ricotta and Greens
Making filled pasta takes some time, but the difference between it and shop-bought – well,
there is no similarity. Swiss chard works particularly well with this dish because its earthy
flavour is tempered by the ricotta, giving the tortelli a richer taste.You can use spinach if you
don’t have chard – spinach and ricotta are of course a mainstay of Italian cuisine. Do use green
chard and not red, which will give the tortelli a funny pink colour when cut open. Serves 4
For the filling:
250 g Swiss chard tops
300 g ricotta cheese
1 egg
70 g Parmesan cheese, grated
a pinch of nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper
For the pasta:
4 eggs
400 g durum wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
semolina for dusting
olive oil
butter
grated Parmesan cheese and sage leaves (optional),
to serve
Make the filling first and pop it in the fridge so that the pasta doesn’t dry out. Blanch the
greens in some slightly salted boiling water, then carefully but firmly squeeze them to remove
excess water. Chop, and then gently work the greens into the ricotta cheese with your hands,
along with the egg, Parmesan cheese, nutmeg, salt and pepper.
To make the pasta, mix the eggs, flour and salt together until you have a dough ball.
Dust it with flour, roll it out roughly by hand and put it through your pasta machine starting
at the thickest setting and reducing each time to a medium/thin thickness.
Cut the pasta sheets into squares of about 6 cm and put about 1 teaspoon filling into the
middle. I always think I’m putting too little in and am tempted to add more, but then they always
burst. You can make bigger tortelli if you wish in order to save time, and 9 cm squares work well
with a larger dollop of the filling.
*taken from the book ‘From Seed to plate’ by Paolo Arrigo, published by Simon and Schuster