Ricotta, Spinach & sausage meat Tortellinis

For the Homemade Tortellinis Dough (2 people):

• On your kitchen counter, pour 200g of durum wheat flour. Form a whole in the center, and pour 2 whole eggs in.
• Blend gradually the flour with the eggs.
• Knead until you get a smooth and homogeneous dough ball.
• Leave to rest for on hour minimum covered with plastic wrap.

For the tortellinis’ stuffing:

• Press the sausage meat out to keep the only the flesh
• In a frying pan, sweat one shallot with a dash of olive oil then fry the meat.
• Deglaze the preparation with half a glass of white wine. Let it reduce.
• Remove from the heat, add the ricotta and mix the whole.

Making the tortellinis:

Some tips before starting: never add flour between the layers, and don’t overload your kitchen counter with too much flour, it will dry your dough and make your folding difficult. You will also need to quickly fold your tortellinis once the dough is ready to not let the dough dry (if it does, it will become brittle which will make the folding difficult). If you are afraid of being too slow for your first try, start by kneading only one half and to the rest later.

I’m using a family pasta maker, but every pasta’s maker is more or less equivalent, the mechanism is always the same. You can shop a similar one to mine here.

• Cut your dough in several equal pieces.
• Pass your dough trough the pasta maker beginning by the thickest part.
• For the first round, pass several time your dough and fold it into two each time to bring it elasticity. Repeat 4/5 times.
• Then pass your dough in each level (only once this time) until the penultimate level.
• Once your dough is stretched out, cut 5cm large squares with a cutter (or with a knife if you don’t have one!).
• For the folding: put more or less a teaspoon of your stuffing in the middle (after the first folding you will see if it is too much or not). Lightly wet the side of your dough, then fold it by putting the corners together to have a triangle shape. Remove the air by gently pressing on the side to have only the stuffing in the middle. The side should be bigger. Then gently wet the stuffing ball and join the two furthest corners to the center of the ball to get a tortellini shape. You need to slightly press them into the stuffing ball (it’s difficult to explain in writing how to fold a tortellini, but I think you all see what shape it’s suppose to be, and you can see on the picture how the folding is done).
• Put flour on a cutting board and let your tortellinis dry.
• For cooking, plunge them into slaty boiling water. They will sunk, as soon as they get back to the surface, you can remove them from the stove one by one by using a slotted spoon. Taste it to make sur it shouldn’t be cooked more. Usually, it takes up to 2/3 min maximum.

You can serve it with some cooked spinach, parmesan cream (you can make it by mixing cream and parmesan), grated parmesan and a pinch of pepper!