Ravioli with Lentils

Christmas is coming so it’s time to think about some delicious Italian Christmas recipes. I decided to start with an Italian first course. Here I show how to prepare delicious Italian ravioli that you can prepare for the Christmas lunch. The main ingredients that I used to prepare this Italian ravioli are the lentils and cotechino that is a large boiled pork sausage. Lentils and cotechino are used in all Italy. I used lentils and cotechino for the filling of ravioli and lentils and fresh cream for their dressing. The preparation of this ravioli is easy but a little bit long: the result is delicious. I the next days a will show the recipes of a delicious main course that you can serve as second course after the ravioli.


INGREDIENTS (for 6 -8 people):
500 g or 4 cups of Flour
150 g of or 1 cup Durum wheat
5 Eggs
1 Teaspoon of salt
1 Cotechino (large boiled pork sausage) of 500 g
1 Carrot
1 Celery
½ Onion
Rosemary
50 g or ½ cup of Lard
1 Glass of white wine
200 ml or 1 cup of fresh cream
3 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
300 g or 1 ½ cup of Lentils

PREPARATION TIME: 2 hours

COOKING TIME: 1 hour

WINE: Oltrepo Pavese (Red Wine)

PREPARATION
The day before you decide to prepare this delicious Italian recipe, place the lentils in a bowl and cover with water. Start with the preparation of the dough for ravioli. Place in a bowl the two kinds of flour, the salt and eggs.



Mix all together and work the dough for ravioli until it becomes homogeneous.



Cover the dough for ravioli with a film and let it stand for half an hour. In this way the dough it will be softer to roll out.
After this time start to roll out the dough, you can do this with the help of a rolling pin or more easily with the help of a pasta machine. Here I use the pasta machine. Start roll out the dough from the biggest thickness of the machine then little by little reduce it until you obtain a pastry of about 2 – 3 mm of thickness. Work the dough until you obtain long stripes.





Now prepare the filling and the dressing for ravioli. If you put the lentils in water the day before you don’t need to boiled them. In this case clean and peel the carrot, celery and onion. Chop them and put them together with minced lard and rosemary. Preheat the extra virgin olive oil in a large pan, when the oil is hot add the mixture of vegetables, lard and rosemary and let them brown for a few minutes.



Then add the lentils and add the wine.



Let it evaporate, add some salt and pepper according to your taste and cover with water.



Let the lentils cook for about 40 – 50 minutes or until the water is completly reduced.



In the mean time let the cotechino cook according to the instructions on the package.



When cotechino is ready, crumble it in a bowl and mix it together with 1/3 of the lentils.



This is the filling for ravioli. You will use the rest of the lentils for the dressing. In particular you have to had fresh cream to the lentils, mix them together, let them cook for a few minutes and blend them.







Now you can fill the ravioli. Put a teaspoon of the mixture of cotechino and lentils on the long stripes of pastry as shown in the picture below.



Cover with another stripes and cut the ravioli of the shape you prefer in this case I used a round shape.



Place the ravioli on a tray sprinkled with a lot of flour otherwise they attach each other.



Let salted water boil for ravioli. Cook ravioli for some minutes until they rise on the surface. Drain them with the help of a skimmer in order not to break them. Place ravioli on a plate, pour the dressing of lentils and cream of them and serve them.



BUON APPETITO!

Ravioli with Salmon

This is a very easy recipe to prepare. You don’t need many ingredients, just the dough for ravioli and the filling that is made of potatoes and smoked salmon, a very good combination of taste. The preparation of the dressing is also very simple and fast, you just need to melt some butter and add some black pepper. The only thing that is a bit long to do is the preparation of the dough for ravioli but it is also very easy and funny. You can safe some time using the machine for roll the dough instead of using the rolling pin. In both case you will obtain very delicious Italian ravioli with smoked salmon and potatoes: a good combination to obtain a delicious Italian food.

INGREDIENTS (for 4 people):
300g of Flour
3 Eggs
Salt
2 Potatoes
200g of Smoked Salmon
40 g of butter
Black pepper

PREPARATION TIME: 1 hour

COOKING TIME: 10 minutes

WINE: Cortona Sauvignon Doc (White Wine)

PREPARATION
Mix flour with eggs and a bit of salt until you will obtain a homogeneous dough.





Then lei it stand for 30 minutes, in the meantime prepare the filling. Boil two potatoes and when they are cooked smash it. Cut the smoked salmon in little pieces and mix it with the smashed potatoes.





It’s time now to stand the dough so, roll out the dough, you can do this with the help of a rolling pin or more easily with the help of a pasta machine. Here I use the pasta machine. Start roll out the dough from the biggest thickness of the machine then little by little reduce it until you obtain a pastry of about 2 – 3 mm of thickness. Cut the pastry in long rectangular pieces like shown in the picture. Put in the middle of the pastry the filling and cover it with the rest of the pastry.



Now cut with the help of a star-shape ravioli, put them on a tray with a bit of flour (in order to not them attach each others).





Let the salted water boil for ravioli and cooked them in it for about 10 minutes. Prepare the dressing for ravioli with melted butter and black pepper.






BUON APPETITO!

Ravioli with Artichokes

Artichokes are vegetables typical of the spring period and it seems that they traditionally comes from Liguria as this delicious Italian first course. Artichokes can be used for any type of Italian recipes like “Torta Pasqualina” that is a sort of pie or as a side dish here I use them to prepare the stuffing of these delicious ravioli. In this recipe artichokes are mix with ricotta cheese, Parmesan, parsley and marjoram. The seasoning of this first course is simply made with butter and sage, but if you prefer you can also prepare a sort of cream with walnuts.

INGREDIENTS (for 8 people):
FOR THE DOUGH:
600 g of Flour
2 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 Eggs
Salt
8 Tablespoons of warm water
FOR THE STUFFING:
9 Artichokes
250 g of Ricotta Cheese
1 / 2 Onion
1 Lemon
1 Egg
40 g of Parmesan
3 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
40 g of butter
Some leaf of sage
Parsley
Marjoram
Salt
Black Pepper

PREPARATION TIME: 1 hour

COOKING TIME: 20 minutes

WINE: Vermentino dei Colli di Luni Lambruschi (White Wine)

PREPARATION
Start with the preparation of the dough: place in a bowl the flour, the eggs, the water, the extra virgin olive oil and some salt,



mix all the ingredients until you obtain an homogeneous dough. Cover the dough with a sheet of film




an let it stand for about 20 minutes. In the meantime prepare the stuffing: clean the artichokes, remove the hard external leafs and peel the stems in order to use the tender internal part; cut in thin slice the artichokes and the stems and place them in a bowl with water and the lemon to not blacken them.





When the artichokes are ready, preheat the extra virgin olive oil in a pan with thin slices of the onion, then add the artichokes and cook them for about 10 – 15 minutes.



When the artichokes are ready, cut them in small pieces and place them in a bowl, add the ricotta cheese, the egg, the Parmesan, come parsley, some marjoram, salt and black pepper and mix all together.



Let salted water boil for pasta. With the help of a rolling pin roll out the dough to obtain a thin long pastry like this shown in the picture below. Place with a teaspoon some stuffing on the centre of the pastry,





then close the pastry over the stuffing and with a wheel for cutting the pasta cut the ravioli.



When water boils place in it the ravioli and cook them for about 7 – 8 minutes in the meantime melt the butter in a pan with the sage,



drain ravioli with a skimmer, place them in a dish and pour on them the butter, sprinkle with some parmesan and serve hot.
This is the result:



BUON APPETITO!

Christmas Ravioli

This is the typical first course that my family prepares for the Christmas day. In particular these ravioli are handmade by my grandmother, which is native of Salerno (Campania) in the southern part of Italy. The main characteristic of these ravioli is their dimension: indeed they are so much big that three or four of them are enough to be replete. Their stuffing is very good: it is made of minced meat of veal, minced meat of pork, provolone (typical Italian cheese), ricotta (typical Italian cheese), Parmesan (typical Italian cheese), eggs, raw ham and loaf. They are dress with the sauce of capon stuffed. I will write the recipe of capon stuffed in the next day.

INGREDIENTS FOR DOUGH (for 10 people)
900 g of Flour
7 Eggs
Salt

INGREDIENTS FOR THE STUFFING
350 g of minced meat of veal
350 g of minced meat of pork
100 g of Raw ham
400 g of Ricotta (Italian Cheese)
100 g of Provolone (Italian Cheese)
1 Loaf
2 Eggs
1 / 2 Glass of milk
70 g of Parmesan
3- 4 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Pepper

PREPARATION TIME: 1 hour

COOKING TIME: 15 minutes

WINE: Costa d’Amalfi (Red Wine)

PREPARATION
In a pan preheat the extra virgin olive oil, add the minced meat of veal and the minced meat of pork and let them cook for about 5 minutes,

then move them in a bowl and let them cool. Blend in a mixer the raw ham and add it in the bowl.

Then blend also the provolone and add it to the meat and the raw ham together with the Parmesan, the ricotta, the eggs, salt, pepper, and mix.

Dip and crumble the loaf in the milk and add it to the mixture.

Mix all the ingredients and the stuffing of ravioli is ready.

Now prepare the dough for ravioli.
Place the flour as a fountain on a table, then sprinkle with salt, add the eggs and knead

until you obtain an homogeneous dough. Let it stand for about 30 minutes.


With a rolling pan, roll the dough out on a worktop sprinkled with flour to a sheet of thin thick. Now with the help of a glass cut the pastry in discs as shown in the picture below.


Each raviolo is made of two discs of pastry one below and one over. Place the discs of the pastry on a worktop sprinkled with flour and put in the middle of them one teaspoons of the stuffing.

Then cover the stuffing with another disc and with the help of a fork close the border.


Let salted water boil, add the ravioli and cook them for 10 – 12 minutes,

then drain them. Place three or four ravioli on a platter, as you desired, and pour the sauce over them. Serve hot and if you want add some parmesan.
This is the result:

BUON APPETITO!