Tortelli and Tuscan Vermentino: recipe and...

Tonight I wanted to pamper my husband with a delicious dish, and after the pumpkin tortelli last night, I thought I'd come up with a special filling. Admittedly also a bit of a fridge-emptier, since I used an aubergine that had been there for a while, the half beef-heart tomato I had left over from lunch, and not much else! These tortelli stuffed with vegetables are not only tasty, they are also easy, cheap and quick. I combined them with a Tuscan vermentino wine Villa Acquavivaat the bottom of the article you will find the tasting and why I chose this white wine with this dish.

Tortelli are a stuffed pasta typical of Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Tuscany that can be closed in various ways. For convenience, I cut the pastry with a round pastry cutter 8 cm in diameter, put the filling, close it in a half-moon shape, and close it again by overlapping the edges like a tortellino or cappelletto. If you want to be quicker, you can also close them 'only' in a half-moon shape: they will still be delicious! 🤩

NB: in this recipe I did not bother to close them with maniacal precision because it is a dish from our daily kitchen. 🙏

Tortelli recipe: ingredients for 30 tortelloni

For fresh home-made pasta:

• 2 extra-fresh large eggs, best to choose yellow ones
• 190 g remilled semolina flour

For the filling:

• 1 small aubergine
• 1 beefsteak tomato
• 50 g tuna
• 50 g breadcrumbs
• 50 g grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• a pinch of salt
• a pinch of nutmeg (optional)
• dill seeds (optional)

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Tortelli recipe: preparation

For homemade fresh egg pasta, step 1:

Step 1. Put the eggs in a bowl and beat them for a few seconds with a fork. Add the flour and mix with the same fork.

Step 2. Transfer the mixture to a clean surface with water or vinegar (no detergent). Since the quantity is small, you can knead it by hand until you get an even, smooth and elastic dough. It will take about 5 minutes.

Step 3. Cover with the same bowl and leave it for the time needed to cut and cook the vegetables for the stuffing.

For the filling, step 1:

Step 4. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a wok or non-stick frying pan while you cut the tomato and aubergine into regular cubes. Bear in mind that there is no rule for the size of the cubes (we blend everything afterwards anyway), you will simply change the cooking time.

Step 5. Cook the vegetables for about 15 minutes over medium heat, stirring if necessary. If it is getting too dry, add a ladleful of hot water or vegetable stock.

For homemade fresh egg pasta, step 2:

Step 6. Flatten the dough with your hands or a rolling pin and as soon as it is about one cm, pass it between the rollers configured in the widest way on a pasta machine (I use this pasta machine from Marcato since way back in 2006!) that there is time to become a desperate housewife. And then it will be that I only use the silicone rolling pin for hygienic reasons, the roughness obtained is practically identical. Indeed, in my experience, the roughness of fast or traditional fresh pasta is influenced more by the skilful use of semolina! Go up to number 5 on the pasta machine, squeezing it one pass at a time and without flouring it too much because to close the tortelli more easily we need a moist sheet. Consider that I only flour the work surface a little and that's all. On the web you'll find instructions to fold the pastry... well, my grandmother taught me to make it this way, we've never folded anything and the pastry has always come out excellent!

Step 7. With a round pastry cutter about 8 cm in diameter (as this set of kaiser pasta cups(but if you don't have one, you can help yourself to a glass!) cut out small discs. Knead and roll out the cut-outs until you have about 30 discs.

For the filling, step 2:

Step 8. Blend the vegetables (I use the immersion blender in its beaker) coarsely.

Step 9. Transfer 200 g of blended vegetables to a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix with a fork.

For fresh filled egg pasta, step 3:

Step 10. In each disc place a generous teaspoon of filling in the centre.

Step 11. Fold the disc into a crescent shape and press the edge well with your fingers. If necessary, make another fold by joining the edges on top of each other and press to shape the tortellone.

For cooking, step 4:

Step 12. Cook the tortelli in boiling salted water and wait until they rise to the surface. After about a minute, transfer them to the pan where you cooked the vegetables with possibly a tablespoon of the blended vegetables you should have left over and a half ladle of the cooking water and let them simmer for a few minutes until they look like the picture above. Transfer them to the plate and complete with a few dill seeds.

Vermentino Maremma Toscana DOC 2020, Villa Acquaviva

It is an intense, brilliant straw yellow. The nose is fragrant, characteristic, elegant and pleasant. One recognises notes of oregano flowers, caper fruits, iodine and candied pear, with an almost honeyed finish. In the mouth, it is consistent, structured and characterised by great sapidity and good length.

The vermentino grapes are harvested by hand in small crates and, after a soft pressing, it is vinified in steel for about six months to maintain the typical characteristics of the variety at its perfect ripeness. Before release, it spends a few more months in the bottle to equilibrate.

I love experimenting stuffed tortelloni of whatever comes to mind! If you are looking for a recipe for tortelli original I recommend you try it. If you need advice, want to suggest a variation or let me know if this vermentino Villa Acquaviva you liked it you can scroll down the page and leave me a comment!

Cheers 🍷

Chiara

P.S. The plate in the photo served me to realise that the tortelloni were cooked and to do the tasting and pairing. Dinner followed with the actual portion of 12 tortelloni for me and 15 for my husband, of course!

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