In the last few days, I started to declutter and spring cleaning the house and amongst magazines and recipe books, I found an award I wan in 2009 at a cookery
I don’t take enough credit for all my accomplishments as I often look forward and plan for the future, but sometimes it’s nice to remind myself of all the big and little achievements, from being published in Italian magazines to an award-winning chef, and to be very proud of.
Many years ago I competed at ScotHot with a pasta dish, the whole experience was amazing, exciting and terrifying at the same time.
This was the brief introduction to the dish:
Representing Italian cuisine with one pasta dish is impossible.
This dish would love to enhance the Italian regions from top to toe.
The pumpkin pasta with gorgonzola, mascarpone and walnuts filling represent the north of Italy.
The long cannellone stuffed with Parma ham, ricotta, parmesan and rocket represent the centre.
The striped ravioli stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, goats’ cheese and black olives represent the south of Italy.
The south and the north, with their intense flavours of gorgonzola and sun-dried tomatoes, are divided from the more delicate and balanced centre.
In this dish, as in reality, is the centre that divided but also helped the two opponents to find a way of living together accepting their differences and particularity.
This recipe has no sauce for a different reason; one that in Italy often the stuffed pasta is served with butter and cheese only to enhance the flavours of the fillings and two because the fillings are so different I should use a very different sauce for every part of the dish. I instead prefer to let the pasta and the fillings give all the flavours and be the major part of the recipe.
I hope you will enjoy the recipe as much as I enjoyed creating it.
Ingredients
- 600 g flour – plus more for kneading and dusting
- 4 eggs
- 150 g butternut squash
- 70 g spinach
- 250 g ricotta cheese
- 25 g rocket salad
- 50 g Parma ham
- 30 g grated parmesan cheese
- 125 g fresh goats’ cheese
- 30 g sun-dried tomatoes
- 20 g pitted black olives
- 10 g pecorino cheese
- 100 g mascarpone
- 40 g gorgonzola
- 10 g walnuts
- Salt and pepper
- 50 g butter
Instructions
- Bake the butternut squash and blanched the spinach.
- Take most of the moisture out and blend separately with one egg and salt.
- Make the three colours pasta.
- Prepare the three fillings.
- Make two sheets of pasta and boil them in boiling and salted water until al dente. Fill them with the Parma ham filling and roll them.
- Brush them with melted butter and sprinkle with parmesan. Pass them under the grill until slightly brown.
- Roll the white and green pasta quite thin and cut with the tagliatelle cutter. On a board put the tagliatelle back together alternating the colours. Roll it with a rolling pin to obtain a striped pasta sheet. Fill with the sun-dried tomatoes and put another layer of striped pasta on top. Seal well and cut with a cutter. Cook the ravioli in boiling water and serve with butter and grated pecorino cheese.
- Roll the butternut squash pasta and fill it with the gorgonzola filling.
- Seal well and shape it. Cook the pasta in boiling water and serve with butter and parmesan.
