8470 Pasta filling

With this recipe, you can use the turkey leftovers.

TORTELLINI ROMAGNOLI

Filling ingredients:

350-400 gr turkey meat, finely minced
50 gr ricotta
50 gr Bel Paese
25 gr grated Parmesan
grated rind of 1/2 lemon
2 eggs
1 teaspon mixed herbs
freshly ground salt and pepper (to taste)
freshly ground nutmeg (to taste)

Mix all the ingredients and proceed to fill the circles of pasta (about 5 cm diametre). Put a small amount in the centre of each circle, fold it and give it the shape of a crescent.

You can simply boil the tortellini for 5 minutes in plenty of salted water or you can also make a soup by boiling them in a vegetable or meat stock.

Serve them with plenty of grated parmesan cheese.

I have another filling recipe... but I have to find it.

Happy pasta making!

This is a delicious stuffing and I put it in Casunzei, a lot like capaletti.
I caramelise my beetroot in the oven till very soft and mash with pepper and salt,mix with ricotto(the flocky type) add a little nutmeg and a smidgen of parmesan and stuff. I serve it with melted butter and lots of poppy seeds on top...Yum
Sprat

Another one is just chop your dandelion leaves with a little radicchio add a soft goat cheese a little egg yolk, peper and salt, nutmeg. Serve hot with sage butter.
Sprat

Thank you so much Pilchard and Gala Placidia . These sound fantastic. I will try them and get back to you.
Noelle

This is the recipe I was trying to find. I understand that it is a very old one and is attributed to Bartolomeo Stefani, chef to the powerful Gonzague family in Mantua during the XVII Century and author of the book "L'Arte di Ben Cucinare, et Instruire", first published in 1662. (If you want to know more about him, do a quick search through Internet and you will find more details)
I have -respectfully- modified or added a couple of things to make it easier.

TORTELLI DI ZUCCA (Pumpkin "tortelli" but you can use the same filling for other shapes of pasta.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE FILLING:

500 gr of baked pumpkin, mashed. (Here it is better to use an electrical oven to dry it as much as possible.
150 gr of "amaretti" biscuits, crushed
50 gr of "mostarda" fruits (use the fruits only)
100 gr grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 small onion, chopped very finely and sauteed in a tablespoon of butter
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin seed
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
the zest of 1/2 lemon, finely grated
salt to taste
pepper (if the "mostarda" is a bit bland, as the filling needs to be spicy)

PREPARATION:

Put all the ingredients in a glass bowl and stir them with a wooden spoon.
The mixture needs to be quite dry.
Fill the pasta squares.
Boil in plenty of salted water and serve with melted butter.

PRESENTATION:

This dish looks superb if you serve it in a pumpkin serving vessel. To make one, you need a big pumpkin that you hollow out, cutting a lid first from the top and removing seeds, stringy pulp and also some of the pulp inside. Be careful not to remove too much as it could collapse. Keep in the fridge for 24 hours. Just before serving, bake it in a warm oven for about 30 minutes, depending on size. The idea is to warm the pumpkin, not to bake it as it could also collapse.
Fill the pumpkin with the tortelli.

If you are too lazy to do this, there are some beautiful pumpkin-shaped serving dishes for sale. I have one and I use it a lot for pumpkin soup as well. A good investment.
Enjoy!

Great idea serving the dish in a scooped out pumpkin!!:yes:

I use ricotta, parsley chopped up fine, and a little parmesan cheese.... and an egg.

- Saturday I made traditional cappelletti (there are tons of recipes on internet) and then made a little tasting of ravioli stuffed with artichokes.

I had some left over cooked artichokes - smashed those up, added some parmesan cheese and took a thin slice of prosciutto crudo and nuked it til it was crisp and then crumbled it into the artichoke situation.

I served it with a simple cream sauce with just a touch of gorgenzola.

It was really good.

The artichoke filling sounds superb. I have remembered another filling which is different and very tasty.

SALMON FILLING

1/2 kg fresh salmon cut into cubes
the grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespon chopped onion
200 gr cream cheese (Philadelphia type)
1 egg
1 teaspoon dried dill
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

PREPARATION:

Simply put all the ingredients through the food processor until they become a paste.

Fill up the pasta with it

Boil and serve with fresh cream, preferably sour cream and a bit of extra dill.

Enjoy!

just to say thanks again to everyone. We are having great fun with the pasta machine and it is becoming a bit of a family thing to use it on a Saturday. It is still taking three of us to make the pasta. We are trying all the different suggestions . Looking forward to trying the artichokes and salmon next Sat.
Noelle

Not one for your pasta machine but this local to us sorry long thread.

Often referred to as Sardinian couscous, fregola is couscous's tastier cousin. Both are made from semolina mixed with water, formed into pellets and dried. But couscous pellets are light and fine, whereas fregola is generally coarser and rougher. More important, fregola is toasted, giving it a nutty, wheaty, roasted taste that couscous lacks. Nor do the pearl-like semolina balls known as Israeli couscous compete with fregola for texture and flavor.

Thanks to Italian food distributors who recently introduced fregola, Bay Area diners can now savor a grain that even many Italians don't know. In the spirit of Italian regional cooking, fregola -- sometimes spelled fregula -- remains resolutely Sardinian. In fact, Sardinian-born chef Niccola Nieddu of Mill Valley's Piazza d'Angelo claims that fregola territory is even more circumscribed.

"It's not really from my area," says the chef. "Fregola is from the south side, near Cagliari. I'm from Gallura, on the north side. My mother, she never cooked it. I'm not sure she knows what it is."

Fresh clam connection

The few Italian cookbooks that include fregola usually marry it with fresh clams and tomatoes. In this traditional preparation, fregola is typically boiled separately, then united with the steamed clams and a tomato sauce made brothy with the strained clam juices. Giuliano Bugialli, in "Foods of Sicily & Sardinia" (Rizzoli, 1996), offers recipes for fregola with beans, fregola with potatoes and celery, and fregola with shrimp -- all exceedingly rustic, rib-sticking dishes. Joyce Goldstein, the Bay Area author and Italophile, says that her forthcoming book, "Italian Slow and Savory," will include a recipe for stuffed chicken poached in broth with fregola.

Leave it to Bay Area chefs to take this grain in new directions. Some are using it as a side dish, some as a room-temperature salad. Others are treating it like risotto, cooking it with slow additions of liquid. At Incanto in San Francisco, chef Chris Cosentino says he goes through 30 crabs a night when he puts Dungeness crab fregola, prepared risotto style, on the menu. At Lulu in San Francisco last spring, chef Jared Doob cooked fregola like risotto, with preserved lemons and chicken stock, then stirred in spring vegetables to make a bed for salmon.

Greek variation

At the Oakville Grocery in Palo Alto, chef Christopher Holt uses fregola in a variation on a Greek salad, with tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, oregano and Greek olive oil. Nieddu has used it in a warm salad with tomatoes and bell peppers.

Philip Ferrato, staff chef at Wired Magazine in San Francisco, is another fregola enthusiast, and prepares the grain in unconventional ways. "It makes the best tabbouleh," claims Ferrato, who cooks it al dente, rinses it until cool, then combines it with typical tabbouleh ingredients such as parsley, garlic, tomato and cucumber. "People really like it because it's got that toasted flavor," he says. To accompany fish, he seasons boiled fregola with extra virgin olive oil and mixed chopped herbs.

One advantage of fregola over barley, rice, lentils or potatoes is that it cooks in 10 minutes, making it a speedy weekday side dish. Cook it in a generous quantity of boiling salted water or stock, then drain it and toss it with butter or olive oil. Some recipes call for adding a few saffron threads to the cooking liquid. Add fregola to winter bean soups in place of pasta, or combine it with sauteed mushrooms to accompany lamb shanks, game birds or beef stew.

Sizing it up

Although fregola apparently exists in a range of sizes, from fine to medium to coarse, you will probably not find this variety in Bay Area markets. The most widely available brand, the excellent La Casa del Grano, is distributed here only in the medium size. The Sardinian fregola packaged by Rustichella is comparable in size and quality. A third brand, Tanda & Spada, found at A. G. Ferrari stores, is larger, more uniform, mushier when cooked and not as appealing.

Tracking fregola's origins could keep a culinary historian in the library awhile. The Sardinians, naturally, insist that fregola is their own invention. Others suspect that the Arabs, who introduced couscous to Sicily, carried the idea to neighboring Sardinia. Succú, another Sardinian word for fregola, does sound something like couscous. The name fregola probably derives from Italian fregare, meaning to rub, an apt description of how moistened semolina is transformed into fregola's coarse crumbs.

So move over, penne and perciatelli. It's time to make room in the pantry for another example of Italy's pasta art. Winter soups will welcome fregola, and tabbouleh season lies ahead.
Where to find fregola

Leonard's 2001, 2001 Polk St. (at Pacific), San Francisco; (415) 921-2001

Rainbow Grocery, 1745 Folsom St. (at 13th Street), San Francisco; (415) 863-0621

Vivande Porta Via, 2125 Fillmore St. (near California), San Francisco; (415) 346-4430

The Pasta Shop, 5655 College Ave. (at Shafter), Oakland; (510) 547-4005. Also at 1786 Fourth St. (near Hearst), Berkeley; (510) 528-1786

A. G. Ferrari, many Bay Area locations

Dean & DeLuca, 607 S. St. Helena Hwy., St. Helena; (707) 967-9980

-- Janet Fletcher
Basic Boiled Fregola.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups broth and/or water

Salt

Pinch of saffron threads (optional)

1 cup fregola

1 tablespoon unsalted butter or olive oil

2 tablespoons minced fresh Italian parsley and/or chives

INSTRUCTIONS: Bring broth or water to a boil. Add salt to taste and saffron, if using. Add fregola. Adjust heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook uncovered until fregola is tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain and return to the warm pot. Add butter and herbs. Stir well; taste and adjust seasoning.

Serves 4

PER SERVING: 205 calories, 8 g protein, 35 g carbohydrate, 3 g fat (2 g saturated), 9 mg cholesterol, 5 mg sodium, 2 g fiber.
Fregola With Pancetta & Pecorino.

A side dish for braised meats or roast game birds, adapted from a recipe from the distributor of Rustichella d'Abruzzo fregola.

INGREDIENTS:

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

2 ounces pancetta, minced

1/2 large onion, minced

1 large garlic clove, minced

1/2 pound fregola

2 1/2 cups chicken broth

2 tablespoons freshly grated pecorino cheese

1 tablespoon minced Italian parsley

Salt and fresly ground pepper

INSTRUCTIONS: Cook the olive oil and pancetta in a saucepan over moderately low heat until the pancetta begins to crisp.

Add the onion and garlic and saute until the onion is soft, about 10 minutes. Add the fregola and the broth. Bring to a simmer, cover and adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook for 15 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in the pecorino, parsley and salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 4 to 6

PER SERVING: 224 calories, 9 g protein, 31 g carbohydrate, 7 g fat (2 g saturated), 10 mg cholesterol, 189 mg sodium, 2 g fiber.
Fregola & Beans

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup dried, or 1 3/4 pounds fresh cranberry (borlotti) beans

Salt

2 ounces lardo (see Note) or pancetta, in small dice

1 to 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 small onion, minced

1 large garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons minced Italian parsley

Pinch of hot red pepper flakes

2/3 cup fregola

INSTRUCTIONS: If using fresh cranberry beans, break them out of the pods. You should get about 1 1/2 cups. Use them all in this recipe. If using dried beans, soak them overnight in cold water to cover generously. Drain before cooking.

Place the cranberry beans in a pot and add cold water to cover by 1 inch. Bring to a simmer over moderately low heat, skimming any foam. Cover and adjust heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook until the beans are tender, about 15 minutes for fresh beans, or 1 hour for dried beans. Season with salt and let cool in the liquid.

In another pot, combine the lardo or pancetta and the olive oil. (Use the larger quantity of oil if using pancetta.) Cook over moderately low heat until the meat renders much of its fat and begins to crisp. Add the onion, garlic, parsley and pepper flakes and cook for 10 minutes, stirring.

Add the beans and bean broth and bring to a simmer. Add the fregola, adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, cover and cook until tender, about 15 minutes, adding a little more water if necessary to cook the fregola all the way through.

Taste and adjust the seasoning. Cover and let rest a few minutes before serving.

Serves 4

Note: Niman Ranch lardo, which is salt-cured pork backfat, is available at the Pasta Shop in Oakland and Berkeley.

PER SERVING: 445 calories, 23 g protein, 68 g carbohydrate, 9 g fat (2 g saturated), 10 mg cholesterol, 274 mg sodium, 20 g fiber.
Fregola With Potatoes & Celery

Although this thick soup is traditionally made with water, substitute broth if you want a meatier flavor. Adapted from "La Cucina Sarda," by Alessandro Molinari Pradelli (Newton Compton Books).

INGREDIENTS:

2 ounces lardo (see Note) or pancetta, minced

1 to 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 small onion, minced

2 celery ribs, thinly sliced

1 large garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons minced Italian parsley

1 quart water

1 pound russet (baking) potatoes, peeled and diced

Salt and pepper

3/4 cup fregola

INSTRUCTIONS:

Combine lardo and olive oil in a pot. (Use larger quantity of oil if using pancetta.) Cook over moderately low heat until meat renders much of its fat and begins to crisp.

Add onion, celery, garlic and parsley. Cook until soft, 15 minutes. Add water and potatoes; bring to a simmer. Season with salt and pepper.

Partly cover. Adjust heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Add fregola. Cook at a gentle simmer, partly covered, until grain is tender, about 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve hot.

Serves 4

Note: Niman Ranch lardo, which is salt-cured pork backfat, is available at the Pasta Shop in Oakland and Berkeley and at Sunshine Foods in St. Helena.

PER SERVING: 320 calories, 8 g protein, 45 g carbohydrate, 12 g fat (3 g saturated), 10 mg cholesterol, 291 mg sodium, 4 g fiber.
Fregola al Forno (Baked Fregola).

A rich dish to serve as a main course with a salad, adapted from a recipe from Richard Soukup of Leonard's 2000 in San Francisco.

INGREDIENTS:

1 can (14 to 15 ounces) San Marzano or San Marzano-style plum tomatoes

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1/3 to 1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage

2 large garlic cloves, minced

Pinch of hot red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Salt

1/2 pound fregola

1/4 pound mozzarella, in small dice

3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons fine fresh breadcrumbs

1 tablespoon minced Italian parsley

INSTRUCTIONS:

Pass the tomatoes and any juices through a food mill with the medium blade. Alternatively, puree in a food processor until smooth.

Put olive oil in a large skillet. Remove sausage from its casing and add to skillet along with garlic and hot pepper flakes. Cook over moderate heat, breaking sausage up with a fork, until it loses its pinkness. Add tomato puree and oregano, crumbling the herb between your fingers as you add it. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced to a thick, full- flavored sauce, 10 to 15 minutes. Season with salt.

Preheat the oven to 400º.

Bring about 2 quarts of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the fregola and cook until just tender, 9 to 10 minutes. Drain and combine with the tomato sauce. Off the heat, stir in the mozzarella and half the Parmesan.

Transfer to a 13 x 8 x 2-inch oval baking dish, or a dish of comparable size, and top with breadcrumbs, parsley and the remaining Parmesan.

Bake until the breadcrumbs are crusty and the fregola is hot throughout, about 15 minutes.

Serves 4 to 6

PER SERVING: 290 calories, 15 g protein, 33 g carbohydrate, 10 g fat (4 g saturated), 23 mg cholesterol, 389 mg sodium, 2 g fiber.

Hi Noelle

Sounds like you`re collecting some great recipes for filled pasta - but don`t gorget when your making ordinary pasta to try mixing other bits into your dough - such as spinach/chilli/sun dried tom paste/grated truffles/cracked black pepper - or one of our particular faves squid ink...yum yum pigs bum....although you wouldn`t serve squid ink pasta with pig`s bum....

LizzyF

[quote=LizzyF;82034] but don`t gorget when your making ordinary pasta to try mixing other bits into your dough - such as spinach/chilli/sun dried tom paste/grated truffles/cracked black pepper - or one of our particular faves squid ink...yum yum pigs bum....although you wouldn`t serve squid ink pasta with pig`s bum....

LizzyF[/quote]

Also, try mixing grated Parmesan into the dough.

A couple of other fillings for Ravioli:
Crab filling
Lobster filling
Chocolate filling as a sweet (or add a touch of Chilli)
Mozzarella filling as a sweet or savoury dish
Mozzarella filling as a sweet and deep fried then drizzle some honey over.

Hi All
THanks again for all your fantastic suggestions. Pas 55 thank you so much for such a wonderful post on fregola. We live in west Cork in Ireland and I havn't seen it in the usual places where we shop but I am going to go to the old English Market in Cork and see if I can find it there. Biagio and LizzyF thank you . I am going to buy a second machine and bring it to our house in Italy so we can use it when we go there too. Anyway it might be fun for family and friends who stay there to have fun with it.I am going to print out all these recipes and take them with us
noelle

Hi Noelle, I wouldn`t schlep a pasta machine all the way over from Ireland as you can buy them easily over here and I`m sure they probably work out cheaper too (although don`t quote me). I have an Imperia, and whenever I`ve seen them over here they`ve been a few bob less.

As for fregola, you might find it a tad difficult to track down in Ireland - and even the UK if you`re outside London - at the moment, outside of its home region in Italy, it`s currently one of those `trendy foods`rather like polenta once was. As it mentions in the article above, many Italians haven`t even heard of it. I`ve been contributing to a book called 1001 Foods to Try before You Die and had to do an entry for fregola, but it was a helluva palaver finding it - and none of the Italians I know here in Abruzzo had heard of it!!!

Let us know if you manage to track some down and what you thought of it!!!

Liz
ps
It`s also quite nice served hot for breakfast with fresh berries

I know it's really common and you see it everywhere these days, but my favourite pasta filling is spinach and ricotta...

[quote=robertford;82474]I know it's really common and you see it everywhere these days, but my favourite pasta filling is spinach and ricotta...[/quote]

Try adding some pinenuts to the filling and a good sprinkle of nutmeg and it is superb.

A surprisingly good filling is mashed potatoes and parmesan cheese with an egg to bind. Serve with a creamy sauce made from porcini mushrooms and you'll be in heaven.
Yvonne

mmmmmmm .... carbohydrate heaven! I'm normally too pig-headed to follow culinary tips but I think I might make an exception in this case, as it sounds right up my street. I've never seen this dish, but I'd guess it is northern in origin - what is its Italian name?

Has anyone tried picking the Borage growing like weeds at the roadside and stuufing it into Ravioli, it's similar to spinach but hairier. It's free and tastes good. The other stuufing I made recently was chunkily cut prawns mixed with Lime/lemon rind, fresh coriander leaves, fresh chilli, garlic, and ginger root,S&P, stuffed into ravioli served with a lemon sauce. Niiiiiiiiice,
Sprat

Sprat, I have used borage as a filling for "Torta Pasqualina" (see recipe in another thread) and I reckon that it would make an excellent filling for pasta. By the way, I'm glad to hear that you can get it for free in Italy, in the North of Spain, where I live, it is quite expensive as it is considered a delicacy. As you said, it is used in recipes where you could also have spinach as an alternative. A tip, add some lemon juice to the cooking water.

Some good 'free' greens that you can try at the moment are wild chives, ramson/wild Garlic which produce large wide leaves and tasty shoots (locally the chinese pick them to use in stirfrys) fresh shoots of wild asparagus,cornsalad ( getting a bit past it now) fresh bracken shoots before they unfurl, gorse flowers and wild rocket!Theres a lot of tasty mint varieties about too.

In fact all in all you should be able to collect all your salad stuff for free!Just ensure you wash it well!

If you do cook any of these delicious "free greens" do add a good pinch of Bicarbonate of soda to the water (less water the better) to keep the strong green colour, or else you'll simply get brown silage, just as I did the first time I tried to produce Campagnola, (Umbrian mix of cooked wild greens which are rather tastier than spinach). These are boiled and the fried in a pan with garlic and lots of olive oil).

Has anyone photographs, or pictures or suggestions of books to look at that may show or describe the "wild greens" that I see all the Nona’s picking by the road side, or any advice on picking for those that may want to pick but don't know what to look for?
I think that the picking of wild greens may disappear, as the young Italians may not be interested in making their own pasta's.
A few years back my Italian zia brought a huge black bin bag full of wild greens to the table for us to "pick over". It took us a good hour. The results four hours later a table full of capelleti. Brill. I just can't quite remember what they all looked like. I do know that one of the young greens was poppy leaf.
Sprat

I tried to find something for you but my research did not go beyond mentions to "verdure silvestri" or "campestre". Perhaps it would be better to ask locals to show you what to pick up or look for. Much better and easier than a photo.