Potato Raviolis

Keywords:	Pasta ¦ Italian Cuisine ¦ Homemade Pasta ¦ Affordable gourmet ¦ Traditional
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Outside Italy homemade pasta is associated with the rarefied atmosphere of expensive gastronomic restaurants. This applies especially to stuffed pasta (ripieni) which most people think is only eatable with a lobster and caviar stuffing. But in Italy many people do pasta at home and they use very humble ingredients to very good effect, like for instance beans pasta. This week I'll show you how to make a simple and very popular dish - potato-stuffed raviolis. This is a very popular family recipe in the North of Italy, comfort food on steroids if you will. Please consider that Italians love their pasta so much that they give them hundreds of love names - babytalking in the kitchen is what it is. So you'll find these as raviolis or tortellis or agnolottis depending on the region or restaurant.

Start by preparing one egg's worth of pasta dough per guest. How much flour will depend on the size of your eggs and the relative humidity in your kitchen that day, but as a rule of thumb for 70gr eggs (2 oz) I use about 100gr (3 oz) of flour. Mix flour and eggs either by hand in a small volcano or using a big-ass kitchen mixer like on the picture.

Knead for about 10 minutes, then roll into a ball. Wrap in plastic foil and store in a cool place for about one hour.

Meanwhile, let's prepare our stuffing. Boil 2 large potatoes or 4 small potatoes per guest until cooked through. Use starchy potatoes if you can.

Finely dice a small onion for each two guests and fry it in a little butter in a hot pan until soft.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes, then when the onion is soft, add to the pot.

drop a tablespoon of tomato concentrate or just enough to give a rosy color to your potatoes ...

... and mash them to a pulp.

Add just enough cream or milk to get a smooth but not too runny mixture.

Add as much grated Parmesan as you like - for me that means a lot, but some people will only use a tablespoon. Just add some, taste and add more if needed. You can grate the rest on the finished tortellis.

Next page you'll see how to stretch the dough and shape the raviolis/tortellis!

Our stuffing is ready and our dough rested. Take an apricot-sized piece of dough and stretch it with the pasta machine or using a rolling pin on a lightly floured table. Stretch until really thin, the one-before-last setting on the machine.

Lights, ready to roll ...

... and action! Place a rectangular piece of pasta on a lightly floured clean cotton cloth. This setup ensures your pasta will not stick, but don't be overly exuberant with the flour as it might make unsightly white patches on the finished raviolis. Using your fingernail if you are a lady, or a dull knife if a man, very lightly trace parallel lines on half your pasta sheet, then trace more lines crosswise to outline little squares. Now imagine a little bird playing hopscotch on this imaginary chessboard, and pooping the exact same quantity of stuffing on every square it passes. Continue until you have covered your pasta sheet with little pieces of stuffing at regular intervals. The exact quantity required depends on the size of your squares. Err on the side of too little otherwise you won't be able to close the raviolis.

Fold the free part of the pasta sheet over the one your little bird covered with stuffing and gently press with your fingers to outline the raviolis. Using a pastry roller, carefully cut strips of raviolis one by one ...

... then cut crosswise to detach each ravioli. I bought this cool ravioli cutter in Cremona, Italy, but you can find similar ones on Ebay for pennies or in pastry supply aisles in many supermarkets. Make sure the cutter does not only cut but also pressed the edges to seal them, otherwise you'll have a leak.

You can use the cutouts in a soup or prepare some pasta for the next day and call it maltagliati (illcuts).

Leave the raviolis on a drying rack or just a plain clean, dry, lightly floured cotton towel until ready to cook.

Fill your largest pot with water, add a bit of salt and bring to a boil. When the water boils like the waters of Lake Lucerne in the first Act of Rossini's William Tell, drop your raviolis all at the same time. Make sure to dust all the flour off before doing so.

They should cook in under 2 minutes.

As soon as the pasta is almost cooked through - that means before it is actually fully cooked - fish them out using a sieve. Please do not pour the whole pot into some strainer like some illiterate Swiss German mama or you'll ruin your work and the raviolis will split open. Instead, do this gently with a sieve or spider like a literate Swiss german mama.

That's it - Italian refinement with the most basic ingredients. The triumph of work, human genius and artistry over universal entropy. You just made the most delicate pasta using plain potatoes and flour.

Congratulate yourself on a job well done and eat as many raviolis as you can before other people in the house realize what they are missing.