Homemade Tortellini
WIP. This recipe will outline a meat tortellini recipe with using fresh pasta.
Overview
There are two big parts to making Tortellini: the filling, and then the pasta rolling/wrapping. My recipe is based off the one found in How to Cook Everything.
Making tortellini is a time-consuming dish. It is recommended to make filling ahead of time, and to block out a good chunk time to roll up the tortellini.
Making The Meat Filling
At this point, I eyeball the meat filling. It's a combination of ground meat (I use sausage and hamburger), chicken stock, a cooking wine of sorts (sherry is nice), parmesan cheese, with some spices thrown in like basil and oregano. An egg (or two) is thrown in to bind everything together, and bread crumbs are used if things end up too liquid. The ideal thing is to end up with something ideal.
To begin, I first cook the ground meats separately, then I add some cooking wine and let that boil off, the cooking stock next and let the boil off, then the parmesan, and then finally egg and crumbs.
Here it is, bubbling away. You'll want that liquid to boil off, or add more bread crumbs.
Pasta-Work
The most characteristic part of the Tortellini is its shape: a very distinct set of folds and wraps which takes a single square of pasta and turns it into a crescent encasing a bit of meat filling.
The pasta itself is dough made from my fresh eggless pasta recipe.
The dough is rolled out to have a thickness of around 2-3mm. It's a little bit thicker than the fettucine I make.
I use a square cookie cutter to cut up the individual squares. Probably about 2 to 2.25 inches?
I also have this really nice 1/2 teaspoon measure that is shaped as a half-sphere (like a tiny melon baller?). This is really good for scooping out filling.
The procedure for creating tortellini is as follows:
Take a square, and brush water on top of it. This will make it a bit sticky, and more cohesive.
Scope out a little bit of filling and place it in the center as a ball (this picture has it a bit squashed).
Fold opposite corners together to enclose the filling inside of a triangle. Firmly press on the edges to seal it up. Try not to tear the pasta.
You now should have an isosceles triangle with a long base. Arrange things so the base fases upwards, with the corner pointing down.
Take the corner pointing down, and fold it upwards towards the filling. Crarefully press it so that it sticks in place. Dip your fingers in water if it isn't sticky.
The remaining corners "ears" or "arms". Take the ear-arms, and fold them over the "head", pinching them together.
Keep doing this, and eventually you'll get a plate of them:
Cooking
To cook tortellini, throw into boiling water. When they are done, they will float to the surface.
Optionally, one can choose to lightly fry the tortellini. Thoroughly drain the excess water (this is important. water going into hot oil can easily kickstart grease fires. Guess how I know this?) and place tortellinis into a skillet with oil. Rotate frequently and cook until it is an ideal shade of brown.
I also like to fry these with a bechamel cheese sauce, such as the one used in my pasta recipe.
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