Alessandra Zecchini: Ravioli

Showing posts with label Ravioli. Show all posts

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Kids and Pumpkins

Come si chiama questa zucca?

John showed me his Italian pumpkin from his veggie plot. As soon as I saw it I though of zucca barucca, but I am not so sure now, so many years have passed since I had one... maybe the name is not correct. Italian bloggers please: if you know this type of pumpkin tell me if it really is a zucca barucca :-)

John says that this pumpkin was collected before the plant died, so it may not be fully mature (I think that the zucca barucca is green first, and then turns yellow...) but as the garden plot is next to the road it was better to harvest it early, or passers-by may have been tempted to steal it. He gave me half.

Half is a lot, we made a soup, a sweet pie, some ravioli... and I still have some left!

The kids made the ravioli. I prepared some pasta dough for them (recipe here), then I took out the pasta machine and handed it over to two very excited kids. They took turns rolling the pasta out, from the larger to the thinner setting, and when I say 'took turns', I mean literally: one roll each, and then start again, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl...

In the meantime I made a quick filling for the ravioli: I used some steamed pumpkin (steaming is better than boiling, which would make the pumpkin too soft, but baking also works well), added some feta cheese, breadcrumbs, and salt and pepper to taste. The children placed a sheet of pasta on the ravioli tray and added the filling.

Then they placed a second layer of pasta on top and rolled it well to seal the filling in place and shape the ravioli. Traditionally in Italy we make tortelloni with pumpkin, but this is quicker, and the kids really enjoyed using the ravioli tray.

Ecco fatto!

They used up all the pasta, and ate the rest of the filling with their fingers! A few cuts of pasta from the sides of the ravioli tray were stored aside and made into maltagliati, a sort of fat irregular tagliatelle which we later used to put into a pumpkin and bean soup.

We cooked the ravioli by dropping them in salted boiling water, and collected them with a slotted spoon as soon as they were ready (they only take a few minutes) to then toss them in a pan with melted butter and sage. A perfect dinner!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Lentil Ravioli with Fennel Butter, and Summer in Auckland

Happy New Year to all! The weather has been lovely here in Auckland, and there are so many good places to go. Yesterday we went to Takapuna beach in the North Shore:

For Xmas we stayed on our West side, where the sand is black and the beaches are dramatically beautiful and wild:

Green walks in the Waitakere Ranges,

And bright red Pohutukawa flowers, the New Zealand Xmas flowers.

Today we went to see the qualifyings for the ASB Classic Tennis. We watched Italian Alberta Brianti play against Elena Bovina from Russia. So strange, I don't feel very Italian at times, and yet, when there is a sporting event all of a sudden my heart starts skipping. It felt like there was my own sister there playing on the courts, and I was really happy when Brianti won. Great match!

Lunch was a picnic in the park. Quite novel for us, who live in the bush, to go and have a picnic in the city! It was lovely :-)

And now to the ravioli! I made some flower pasta (recipe here), I used roses, borage and nasturtiums. I cooked some brown lentils, then I passed them in a pot with olive oil, a shallot and salt. I used them as filling.

Possibly herbs would have been better: the lentil filling is quite dark, so the petals were not so visible. I'll remember this next time :-)! For the sauce I cooked some baby fennels very slowly with butter and a little water. I added more butter, and just a pinch of salt at the end.

The fennel butter matched the lentil filling beautifully. A great dish for New Year (FYI, in Italy it is traditional to eat lentils for New Year). The borage flowers are decorations, but they too can be eaten, and we did!