Culurgione, A.K.A. ravioli's chubby Sardinian cousin. I've been so drawn to these lately and imagine 4 of these placed on a neat pool of tomato sauce in a beautiful dish. A show-stopping pasta course for your dinner party.
To learn to fold them, I watched countless videos over and over again of old Sardinian women making them. After having numerous meltdowns I finally got the hang of it and included a video of me folding them below.
Ingredients:
1 egg per person + 1 egg to add to the ricotta
1 cup all-purpose flour per egg + more to add later on
One block of pre-chopped frozen spinach
475 g of ricotta cheese (1 container)
Dash of nut meg (add however much you like)
*You will need a pasta machine and a round cookie cutter
Directions:
Defrost the spinach, then wrap it with at least 5 layers of paper towels and squeeze all the water out until there is no more moisture.
Create a hill on the countertop with the flour, dig a little hole in the centre and crack the eggs into the hole. Knead together and if needed, continue to add more flour to prevent the dough from sticking.
Kneed in the spinach and add more flour if the dough is too sticky. If the dough gets to be too dry you can add water.
Once the dough is mixed and is the right texture, place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator, then cut the dough into small sections so they can fit in the pasta machine to be flattened out.
Lay out all the pieces of flattened pasta dough and use a cooke cutter or a circular object that is approximately 4-inches in diameter to cut out circle shapes. You need these pieces to be big enough to fit the filling and fold them so they stay closed.
Once all the circular shapes are cut out, mix the ricotta with one egg and a dash of nut meg.
Lay one pasta circle in your hand, spoon some ricotta filling in the centre of it and fold (see below video).
Once you're done your meltdown (you will have one) and finish folding all the pasta, fill a pot of water and let it come to a boil.
Depending on the size of the pot, drop in about 10 culurgione into the water, you don't want them to be too close together.
Once the culurgione rise to the top, cook them for about 5 more minutes and remove them from the water.
Once all the pasta is done cooking, place them in a pot and toss them in your desired sauce (I used a simple tomato sauce).