HOMEMADE RAVIOLI STUFFED WITH RICOTTA MASCARPONE AND SPINACH SERVED IN A NUTTY BUTTER AND CRISPY SAGE LEAF SAUCE

GLUTEN OR GLUTEN FREE 

I made this pasta with 00 Caputo gluten free flour for me and with 00 Caputo wheat pasta flour for the rest of the family, recipe works brilliantly with both Caputo flours

This dish brings so much joy to my mouth, smile and heart, a special dish that I make for my mum, the light pillows of ravioli stuffed with a ricotta and mascarpone spinach filing that is rich and subtle tossed through a generous amount of beautiful nutty sage butter then finished off with crispy butter fried sage leaves makes every spoonful just wonderful.

Prep time 30 minutes / Resting time 30 mins - 2 hours / Cooking time 5 minutes

Ingredients

(serves 4)

The Pasta

200g Caputo 00 flour or Gluten free Caputo flour

2 large eggs

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp Himalayan sea salt

Semolina for dusting

Spinach and Ricotta Filling

150g spinach

150g ricotta

75g mascarpone 

1/4 tsp grated nutmeg

1 lrg pinch sea salt

1 lrg pinch fresh ground black pepper

1 egg beaten for egg wash

Sage Nutty Butter

200g salted butter

12 small sage leaves

Fist make the pasta, evenly mix the flour and salt and tip out on to your worktop in a pile, make a well in the centre.

Using a fork whisk the eggs then start to flick the flour in to the eggs, do this from the inside of the well so as too keep the outside wall secure to stop any egg running out on to your work top.

Flick the flour into the beaten eggs while whisking in.



Keep adding flour in to the beaten eggs until the eggs won’t run when you take the barrier wall of flour away then bring together with your hands or pasta scraper to form a dough ball.

Once you’ve formed a dough ball knead for 10 minutes until soft and smooth, form into a ball and leave to rest in a glass bowl for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours at room temperature.



Leave the dough to rest at room temperature in a floured covered bowl for 30 minutes and up to 2 hours.

Spinach and Ricotta Filling

Bring a pan of salted water to a simmer, add the spinach and cook for 1 minute, drain and leave to cool then squeeze and squeeze the spinach until no liquid is left in the spinach. finely chop and then mix with the rest of ingredients except the egg.  

Divide the pasta in to 4, if you have a pasta machine shape the pasta as wide as the pasta machine, start on number one on the rollers, dust your work top generously with semolina, run the pasta through the rollers  up to number 4, dusting the sheets each time with semolina the lay out in rows.  If your rolling by hand as the Italian Nona’s do the heavily dust your worktop and share the pasta dough roughly 5”wide then roll out long and thin but not paper thin as you want the pasta to hold the filling but not to be thick as this will result as chewy.

As you can see the pasta sheet is thin but not super thin, I went to number 4 out of 8 on the pasta roller settings, you need to repeat this process with the next three portions of pasta so you will have 4 sheets of pasta lined up, tops and bottoms.



I like to use a small pioneer woman Ree Drummond scoop to portion the spinach and ricotta mix on to the sheet of pasta, paint the egg wash all around the ball of filling and edges of the pasta sheet, next lay the next sheet on top, you can do this as a row or individual.

Lay the whole sheet or individual sheets of pasta on top of the filling, cupping your hands around the filling squeeze out any air and gently hug the top sheet of pasta around the filling.



Once the pasta is sealed around the filling using a pasta cutting wheel or stamp to cut the shaped the pasta which also helps seal the pasta sheets together ensuring no water will enter the ravioli.

I usually use a old antique pasta wheel to cut my ravioli but I couldn’t find it !  So I used my old ravioli cutter which worked out brilliant and actually gave a better crushed seal from the cutting.

Cooking the Ravioli 

To cook the ravioli bring a large pan of boiling water to a good rolling simmer, add a tsp of salt, drop in your ravioli’s and cook for 2 minutes, drain and leave to steam for 1minute.

Meanwhile place the butter in a pan medium low heat and melt, pour off the clarified butter (clear liquid) over the ravioli’s in your serving bowls reserving leaving behind the milk solids (milky white in the butter) behind in the pan.

In a hot pan fry the sage leaves face down in more butter for 2 minutes, the butter will turn light brown and be infused with a nutty flavour and crisp the sage leaves, pour over the finished ravioli’s and enjoy immediately.