recipe first. i think we can all attest to the irritating deathscrolling that happens on food blogs.
tortellini with mushrooms
notes on equipment: if you don't have a piping bag, use a ziploc bag and cut a tip off. start with a smaller cut, as you don't want to have too much filling going all over the place. if you don't have a cookie cutter, use a lid from a ball jar. anything round that doesn't have any bumps on the rim should work just fine.
if you're looking for a good resource for all things pasta, i would recommend marc vetri's 'mastering pasta'. it is a tome for those looking to explore what it means to love all the iterations of a dish and his recipe is the one that i use for a basic pasta dough. it has always yielded lovely results for me and is available for download when you google search the book:
dough recipe:
300 g all purpose flour
3 whole eggs
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
create a well of flour, mix in eggs, water and oil. using your hands, blend ingredients together until they create a shaggy dough. continue to knead for 5-7 minutes until the dough is smooth. double wrap in plastic wrap and set in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour. roll out dough to a 6 for stuffed pasta, 7 for fettucine. in between rolls, keep remainder of dough wrapped in plastic.
pasta filling:
1 pint whole milk ricotta
1/2 oz porcini mushroom powder
5 fresh sage leaves, cut as small as you possibly can cut them, stem reserved
2 sprigs of thyme, leaves reserved, branches discarded
1 clove garlic, minced
3 tbsp olive oil
1/8 tsp smoked spanish paprika (optional, but give it a go)
1/8 tsp sichuan peppercorn (optional, but again, give it a go)
salt to taste
mix all ingredients in a bowl. taste it! does it need salt? more spice? trust your instincts. if the filling seems stiff or dry, add a splash of cream.
to form tortellini:
roll out pasta to 6, starting at one and working your way up to 6. cut out as many circles as you possibly can per rolled pasta sheet, making sure your surface has been lightly floured. reserve scraps for a freeform pasta meal at another time. pipe about 1 tsp filling into pre cut circles. fold circles in half to create 'mezzalunas'. you can stop here for a lovely pasta, or if you are feeling more ambitious, take the two ends of the mezzaluna and pinch them together to form a tortellini. if you are having difficulty with the pasta sticking together, brush very lightly with a little water. this will help the dough glue to itself.
sauce recipe:
1 tbsp unsalted butter
6 large cremini mushrooms, quartered
1 large shallot, sliced thin
1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced on a bias
1 pint broth of your choice (i used a mix of prosciutto stock and lighter veggie broth)
reserved sage stem from pasta filling
1/2 lemon
salt and pepper to taste
melt the butter over medium high heat. add shallots, stirring occasionally for about 5 minutes until slightly translucent and fragrant. add mushrooms and a small pinch of salt, stirring occasionally for about 5 minutes. throw in the garlic, sage, and squeeze the lemon over the pan. allow to cook for another 2 minutes before adding the broth and reducing the heat to medium. allow to simmer for about 10-15 minutes until the sauce has reduced by 75%
while the sauce is cooking, set a small pot of water to boil. when the water has come to a boil, cook up to 8 tortellini at a time, more for a larger pot. the important thing is not to overcrowd the pot. make sure your pasta has room to swim around. after 2 minutes, the pasta will be completely cooked. do not overcook pasta! it is a cardinal sin and will make most people with a pasta background very upset. if you want to test what time works best for your version of al dente or cooked, use your pasta scraps as guinea pigs in the pot along with the tortellini. keep in mind that the layers of pasta will cook just slightly longer than the pieces of the pasta that are glued together as they are denser.
drain the pasta. if your sauce isn't done yet, reserve the pasta on the side and cover with a good amount of olive oil to prevent sticking. if everything is ready, put the tortellini into the pan with the sauce, adding about 2 tbsp pasta water. set the sauce and pasta to high heat to reduce the sauce quickly, tossing the pan to coat the pasta with the sauce. after about 1 and a half minutes, you should be ready to plate! make sure to taste the sauce before you plate. does it need salt? if it does, add it to your heart's delight.
leave it as is, add herbs, add more cheese, add some cured meat, pour yourself some wine and enjoy what you created. the beautiful thing about good pasta is it will pair well with creativity. i added sweety drop peppers, fresh thyme, a tiny sprinkling of parmesan and olive oil to mine.
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and now for the fluff!
short version: i love making pasta and i love eating pasta.
longer version: pasta is my cure-all. it is meant for celebrations, heartbreaks, tuesday nights, wednesday mornings, wednesday afternoons...you get it. i have yet to understand why america has shunned this food as a breakfast option and put a hefty pricetag on it for a special night out.
flour. eggs. water. oil. why are we so daunted the ratio of these ingredients? why do we default to the premade, hard, dry pastas readily offered at grocery stores when we have all the ingredients at our fingertips? because it requires technique, know-how and familiarity that a lot of us didn't grow up with; because someone once lumped homemade pasta into the category of fried chicken, sourdough starters and scallops, all of which seem to be written with warnings attached of how much of a project they are to make at home.
BUT i get it. it's frustrating making pasta when you don't really know what you're doing. SOMETIMES it's frustrating making pasta when you DO know what you're doing. at this point, i have come to terms with the long process of kneading, how to gauge the texture of the final project with light pokes, how sensitive to the environment the dough can be, how unforgiving a slightly wet or desert dry dough is. when i was working at pmg i had to make pasta at least once a week, using ancient grain flours that we ground on the premises. i enjoyed doing it but would never really opt to do it when i could be doing something flashier, like learning how to braise and prepare a 30 pound octopus or create a gorgeous dessert. it was too low rent and too much muscle and too much time and cut into my projects and TOO MUCH. everyone was better at it than me, too, and being that it wasn't something that ever earned me compliments (being so young in my career i felt that i needed that more often than not, and i'll not lie to you, i still really like some good ol' fashioned validation. yes, i'm one of those.) that i would shove this task onto someone else if given the choice.
looking back on it, you shouldn't get your ass handed to you every day, but you should be working with and learning from the things you find most challenging. don't be afraid of failure. little did [do] i know.
in the last few months of pmg i remembered that my chef mentor had called making pasta very relaxing, and i finally started to agree with him. it was my moment before there were too many things working on the stove and in the oven. rolling out the dough happened when everything was quiet and i was drinking an espresso before the staff showed up and the early afternoon light poured through the kitchen windows and i put on sam cooke because he will eternally sing the notes in my soul.
i took a break from pasta after pmg closed, but i found myself missing it more than i expected. i'd always loved pasta, why had i shunned it? why didn't i appreciate the process until the end? i was the person who told my mom at age 8 that all i wanted to eat in college was ramen and macaroni because the food mom and aunt carol made wasn't good (note: it was and is GREAT and i was a picky idiot). i was the person who ate chongqing street noodles and hot and sour sweet potato noodles for breakfast in yangshuo at least 3 times a week so why was i hatin? i freakin love pasta.
in the summer of 2020, the restaurant i work at currently was allowed to reopen. chef asked me how good at gnocchi i was, and i reminisced about the times that i observed gnocchi being made around me taking meticulous notes, and following that, those handfuls of times i actually took responsibility for the dish from start to finish. i got excited! i remembered how good it was! but it had been a really long time since i'd made them, so standing on the cusp of an evolving restaurant concept and being in charge of a pretty powerful dish felt a little intimidating. but life is about taking risks and doing something bold, so i shut down my self doubt for a minute and listened to the process. i hit a point where i got to know what i was doing, and at that point, i was able to feel the frustrations from the past and turn them into a contemplative, calm moment. the stresses that i had were gone and i became excited when it was pasta day.
so now, after understanding that loving something isn't always perfect but it is always beautiful and worth it, i make the dough and roll it out and cook it both at home and at work. it is, indeed, relaxing. it will take work, but so do lots of things worth doing. pay attention to the process and enjoy the ride.