Bollito and other boiled dinners

Some of our favorite Sunday meals during the cold weather months are boiled dinners. I usually make homemade broth in the afternoon and, not wanting anything to go to waste, the boiled meat and vegetables that went into the pot are usually dinner that night.

Bollito misto
If you've made the broth with beef, you'll have lesso di manzo, also known as bollito di manzo. (The verbs lessare and bollire both mean 'boil'.) If you've used chicken, pollo lessato. And, if you want to serve one of the great classic dishes of northern Italian cooking, you can try bollito misto--made with beef, chicken or capon, veal breast, veal tongue, and/or calf's head, pig's foot, and one of two sausages originally from Modena, called cotechino and zampone, (often eaten with lentils on New Year's Eve, but that's another story). The sausages have a strong taste, so you should boil them separately. They can be hard to find outside Italy but available (sometimes) online or in the better Italian food shops, especially around holiday time. In Italy, you'll find them in every supermarket in December, pre-cooked and vacuum packed--just heat and serve.

A classic accompaniment is mostarda di cremona, a medieval concoction of candied fruits made with a bit of mustard seed, which gives it a sweet and spicy taste. Very unusual for the modern palate, but I really like it. If you can't find mostarda, as odd as it might sound, chutney makes for a great substitute.

By the way, if the main point of your exercise is to serve the meats, you should vary the recipe for broth a bit: first, simmer the vegetables for about an hour or so before adding the meat(s). This creates a kind of court bouillon that will flavor the meat, and adding the meat to the already simmering water will allow the meat to retain more of its own flavor rather than lending it to the broth. And you may want to take more care about the cooking times of the different cuts of meat, especially with the chicken and any other poultry, than you would  when making broth. You can hold back the quicker cooking meats, for which you'll need to calculate backwards: so if your beef will take about 3 hours to cook, for example, wait two hours before adding the chicken, which will generally take about an hour. In the alternative, and a perhaps a bit simpler, you can always take out some pieces when they're done cooking and return them to the pot when everything else if cooked. If you want to eat the vegetables, too, you can add them about an hour before the end of the cooking time rather than pre-cooking them, but remember always to bring the water to the simmer before you add the meat. By the way, don't be misled by the name 'boiled dinner': you should not literally boil the meats and vegetables; besides clouding the broth, hard boiling will tend to toughen the meats.
 
Bollito is the ultimate make-ahead meal; just let it sit (uncovered) and reheat gently whenever you're ready to eat.

Salsa verde and salsa rossa

In fancy restaurants, bollito is often served from a cart in which the various cuts of meat are still swimming in their cooking broth, in various compartments, and slices are carved for your at tableside. This ensures that the meats are still warm and moist when you eat them. Of course, this is not practical for the home cook, so I generally serve my bollito is large pieces in a large, heated serving bowl, with various ladlefuls of broth on top to keep it moist.

Bollito is almost invariably served with one or more sauces. My favorite is salsa verde or green sauce. It was laborious to make in the old days when the use of a mortar and pestle was obligatory. These days, using a blender or food processor, it's very easy: you whiz together garlic, capers, anchovies, lots of parsley, vinegar and olive oil, season with salt and pepper to taste. If you like a little heat (and in our house we generally do) add some red pepper flakes. Some variations call for cornichons, and I add them on occasion. The texture should be smooth and saucy, but not a puree, each of the elements should be identifiable, so don't overblend. If it's too thick, add more oil until it reaches a 'saucy' consistency. Another typical sauce for bollito (which I don't like nearly as much) is salsa rossa made by simmering tomatoes with a soffritto of onions and red bell pepper until well reduced (about 15-20 minutes), passing it through a food mill or blending it, and then simmering the resulting puree with some vinegar and sugar to give it a slightly sweet and sour taste. Another popular sauce, from Verona, is called peara', made with bread crumbs sauteed in butter and bone marrow, adding broth and lots of freshly ground pepper until it swells and becomes smooth. It's wonderfully unctuous.

If you're feeling in an austere mood, you can always enjoy your bollito simply with some sale grosso (coarse sea salt).

Bollito misto is a meal in itself, but is often accompanied by mashed potatoes. Being the frugal folks, in our house we often just serve the vegetables that cooked with the meats. If you're really hungry, a classic first course to precede a bollito is tortellini in brodo, made, of course, with the broth from the bollito itself. The classic wine to drink with bollito is a dry Lambrusco, although I find it goes well with many different red wines, so long as they're not too heavy, like a Bardolino or a Pinot Noir.

Boiled meats were once a common thing, and many recipes have developed over the years for using leftovers in various forms of lesso rifatto, in which the leftover meat is braised with other ingredients, often with onions and/or tomato sauce. Although not particularly Italian, I love to use leftover boiled chicken to make creamed chicken over rice. And leftover boiled meats also make their way into salads, croquettes, and stuffings for ravioli...

New England Boiled Dinner

Italians are hardly the only ones who make boiled dinners. It is, I would dare say, almost universal. Here in America, corned beef and cabbage is a venerable, if disappearing, form of the boiled dinner. Add other root vegetables like onions, carrots, turnip, rutabagas, potatoes and parsnips and you have a New England Boiled Dinner (see photo). An equally good--IMHO even better--version is made with a picnic pork shoulder instead of the corned beef.

The New England Boiled Dinner is traditionally served with mustard or horseradish sauce, but since my significant other doesn't care for either mustard or horseradish, I tried to come up with an alternative. Believe it or not, I decided to try Green Goddess Dressing! Sounds bizarre until you realize that homemade Green Goddess Dressing is basically an Italian salsa verde made with sour cream and/or mayo instead of olive oil. And the experiment worked very well, if I do say so myself.

Other Boiled Dinners
There are many other versions of the boiled dinner, from the French poule au pot (boiled chicken) and pot au feu, made from beef shank, ribs and marrowbones, often boiled in broth rather than water for a richer flavor, and served with coarse salt and cornichons, ttp the Spanish cocido and the Portuguese cozido, to the puchero popular in Argentina and Uruguay, to the Irish Boiled Dinner, very close to the New England Boiled Dinner, to the Japanese shabu-shabu or the Chinese Mongolian Hot Pot. As far as I'm concerned, they're all wonderful!

One last TIP: If you want to cut down on the time, you can use a pressure cooker. It'll need to be a large one, of course, big enough to hold all the meats, vegetable and water. You need to boil and skim at the beginning, as you would for a normal broth, then rather than lowering the temperature to a gentle simmer, you cover and let the pressure rise. Figure about 1/3 the time that it would normally take (15-30 minutes for chicken, 1 hour for beef). The result is not quite the same, I'm sorry to say, but acceptable. In such cases, I often allow the broth to simmer for 20-30 minutes after you've released the pressure, which gives it a bit more flavor. 

Buttery Mashed Potatoes

While it's true that we mostly eat Italian at home, there are some dishes that even I have to admit the French do better. (I hope Angelina isn't listening....) One of them is potato puree, also known as mashed potatoes, and, more specifically, the incredibly buttery version made famous by Joel Robuchon at Jamin, his Paris restaurant.

You begin by either steaming or boiling mealy potatoes in their jackets (russets or Yukon golds would do well here) until perfectly tender. Drain them and run some cold water over them to cool them off slightly. Peel them as soon as they are cool enough to handle and cut them into chunks into a food mill.

Mill the potatoes into a dry pan over medium heat. With a wooden spoon, stir them and allow any water to evaporate. The potato puree will be rather stiff and hard to stir, but persist. And don't worry if some of the potato begins to stick to the bottom of the pan, as  this is a sign that the potatoes are drying as they should and will anyway soon rectify itself.

Now that the potato flesh is perfectly dry, it is ready to absorb lots and lots of butter, which you will add to the potatoes a bit at a time. When I say a lot, I mean at least a stick or more (100 g) for 1 kilo (2 lbs.) of potatoes. Season liberally with salt. As you add successive bits of butter, the puree will soften and form a kind of a ball. Taste them--they should be well seasoned and have a wonderfully buttery flavor. If not, add more butter and/or salt. Finally, thin out the puree with some hot milk (whole milk, obviously!) or, if you are feeling particularly decadent, with some cream, until you reach the consistency you prefer. I like mashed potatoes rather soft, just thick enough to hold their shape.

Serve immediately. I like to place a dab of butter on top of the mashed potatoes, just for show.

NOTES: This recipe is from a wonderful cookbook co-authored by Robuchon and Patricia Wells called Simply French (William Morris & Co. 1991). Robuchon calls for a full 12 tablespoons (1-1/2 sticks or 150g) of butter and says that the amount may be doubled for a richer version! He also calls for passing the puree through a fine sieve, which produces a velvety texture. But for this 'home-style' version the food mill is enough. Unlike most mashed potatoes, these will keep for up to a hour before serving.

Penne ai peperoni e alici

A quick note on a quick dish: penne with peppers and anchovies, something I made up, on the spur of the moment, to use some of the red bell peppers in the fridge before they went off. I decided to riff off the classic roasted peppers and anchovy antipasto and pair it with pasta. The results of my experiment were pretty tasty, so here's the recipe:

Stew some sliced red bell pepper (one per person) in olive oil over medium heat until soft. (You can cover the pan and add a spoonful of water from time to time to help the softening process along.) Then turn the pepper slices in a food processor and pulse a few times until they are nicely minced but have not been reduced to a puree. Return to the pan.

Add a battuto of garlic, parsley, a handful of capers and a few anchovy fillets to the minced pepper in the pan and continue cooking over low heat for a minute or two more. The mixture should glisten beautifully. If not, add a bit more olive oil. (Turn off the heat if need be until the pasta is done.)

In the meantime, you will have cooked some penne (or other pasta of your choice) in well salted water until very al dente. Transfer the cooked pasta to the pan along with a ladleful of the pasta water and, over low heat, mix well until the pasta is well coated with the sauce and any excess water has evaporated. Serve immediately.

NOTE: You could, of course, use roasted peppers for this dish. It might give it an even deeper flavor. But this dish, quickly made with fresh peppers, was perfectly lovely.

Minestrone: A Primer

Many people think of minestrone as the kind of hearty fare best eaten in the cold weather months. Minestrone is wonderful in fall and winter, of course, but it can actually be enjoyed year-round, its component ingredients changing with the seasons, served hot in the winter, warm in the spring or autumn, and even 'cold' (ie, room temperature) in the summer.

Like so many other classic dishes, there are practically as many minestroni as they are minestrone cooks. But almost all minestrone recipes begin with three 'base' vegetables: onion, carrot and celery. You will notice that these are the same three vegetables, referred to as odori in Italian, that go into the most common type of soffrito, or flavor base, for countless sauces, stews and soups. But while for most dishes you want a soffritto to dissolve into whatever it is you are making to provide maximum background flavor, and therefore you chop the vegetables very fine, here you want each component vegetable to retain its own identity, so chop the vegetables into smallish cubes.

Step 1: You begin the minestrone with oil and/or butter in the bottom of a pot big enough to hold all your ingredients with room to spare. (Better too big than too small.) You want a generous amount of fat, for reasons that will become evident as you read on. Add onions first, allow them to rosolare (saute) without browning while you chop the carrots, then add the chopped carrots while you chop the celery, then add the celery. If you like, you can also add some chopped pancetta to this base--it adds a lovely flavor. Add a healthy pinch of salt, which will keep the vegetables from browning and bring out their flavor. You will keep doing this until all your odori have had a chance to cook and absorb the flavors of the oil and preceding vegetables.

Step 2: After these base ingredients are all added to the pot, you add 'hard' vegetables in season. All kinds of squash, including pumpkin or butternut in the colder months, or zucchine in the warmer months, would go in at this point. Potatoes, tomatoes and string beans are also common additions. Once again, cut them into small (but not tiny) pieces and add, one by one, to the pot, allowing each ingredient to be well coated with the oil and absorb the flavor of all the vegetables that have preceded it.This time around, I used butternut squash, zucchini, potatoes and green beans:

Step 3: Now add any leafy vegetables that you want to, cut up into strips. Most common, especially in the cold weather months, is savoy cabbage, but kale, spinach, swiss chard, escarole and chicory are also great additions. (In Tuscany, the favorite leafy vegetable for soups is cavolo nero, or black kale.) This time I used cavolo nero and leeks:

Step 4: Now add water (or broth) to cover, bring to a gentle simmer and allow to continue simmering for a good hour or more (most traditional recipes call for two hours of cooking), until all the vegetables are almost meltingly soft and the soup is getting quite thick. (This step can be sped up if you use a pressure cooker, in which case cook under pressure for about 20 minutes.)

Step 5: Now you add one or more legumes: cannellini beans, borlotti beans, cranberry beans, peas, baby lima beans, fava beans, (occasionally) chick peas, etc. Here I am assuming that you are using canned, frozen or pre-cooked legumes. (If you are using fresh beans, then add them before you add the water.) Cook for another 20-30 minutes, adding more water if the soup is getting too thick--but the soup should actually be quite thick, more of a stew than a soup. In fact, I like t crush some of the vegetables against the side of the pot; the crushed veggies melt into the soup, giving it a thick and 'smooth' quality.

Ecco fatto! You can serve the soup immediately, but it is much better made ahead and served the next day, or at least after a few hours' rest.

NOTES: You can use of variety of 'toppings' to provide an extra flavor flourish to your minestrone: You can stir in grated parmesan before serving if you like, sprinkle it on top or serve it on the side. Pesto sauce is wonderful, too--a typical summer addition to minestrone--either stir it in before serving, or add a dollop on top of each soup plate, and let each diner mix it in to taste. Or, in a typical Tuscan style, just pour over un filo d'olio and a generous grating of black pepper over each soup plate before serving. As mentioned, you can serve it hot, warm or room temperature.

You can also add pasta, rice and even chunks of bread (see ribollita below). Of course, pasta is more typically southern, rice more typically northern and bread is typically Tuscan. I usually cook the rice or pasta separately before adding it to the pot at the very last, letting it simmer a bit longer, but not too long, just before serving. If you are making it ahead, don't add the rice or pasta (or bread) until you re-heat and serve, or it will become impossibly mushy.

As mentioned, the choice of vegetables is almost infinite, according to your taste, what looks best at the market and the season. But there are some vegetables to avoid, in particular those that have a very strong flavor that would overwhelm the others: peppers, for example, or most hard cruciferous vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower. And, with one notable exception (see below), eggplant is not usually part of minestrone, either.

Finally, while minestrone can be made totally vegetarian or vegan, it is often made with bits of pork, either cut up pancetta, prosciutto or pre-cooked pork rind (cotenne) for deeper flavor. In a pinch you can use crumbled sausage meat. Add the pancetta or sausage meat first to the oil, let it saute and then begin with the onion and proceed from there. Add the pork rind just before adding the water or broth. Broth gives it an even deeper meatier flavor, although personally I find this makes the soup too 'heavy'.

VARIATIONS: As I mentioned, there is an endless variety of minestroni, based on region of origin, the season, and/or the cook's personal preferences. Here are a few examples of the better known regional versions (NB: Unless otherwise noted, always begin with onions, carrots and celery, then add the ingredients listed):

Minestrone alla milanese: pancetta, potatoes, tomatoes, spinach, savoy cabbage, peas, borlotti or cannellini beans. (Some recipes call for green beans.) Typically includes rice.

Minestrone alla genovese: One version calls for pumpkin (or butternut squash), beans, dried peas, savoy cabbage, potatoes, green beans, erbette (substitute baby spinach outside Italy), tomatoes. Another calls for potatoes, borlotti, zucchine, bietole (swiss chard), savoy cabbage, spinach and (very unusually) eggplant. Serve with pesto, of course!

Minestrone alla livornese: fresh beans, spinach, prosciutto, savoy cabbage, a few swiss chard leaves, potato, zucchine, tomato sauce, pork rind (added just before the broth--not water).

Minestrone alla napoletana: garlic, zucchine, fresh beans, peas, generous amount of parsley and a lot tomato--the soup should have a definite red tinge. Neapolitan minestrone is soupier than other kinds of minestrone, so add much more water. (This is the kind of minestrone that non-Italians will probably be most familiar with.)

Minestrone alla pugliese: cabbage, green chicory, green beans, tomatoes, pork rind. Serve with short pasta (eg, ditali).

In Tuscany, they make a very special kind of minestrone called la ribollita: You make a 'regular' minestrone with cannellini beans, cavolo nero, savoy cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, leek, swiss chard and pork skin (or substitute pancetta). You let that rest. Then when you are ready to eat (the next day) you reheat the soup (hence the name, which means 're-boiled' in Italian), adding some water if too thick, and then chunks of Tuscan bread. Mix and allow to rest a few minutes before serving. This may be my personal favorite version, although the genovese gives it quite a run for its money.

Quadrucci in brodo

The simplest, and perhaps the best, way to use your skills for making fresh pasta and broth at home is to serve a warming bowl of pastina in brodo. It makes a wonderfully light but savory primo piatto, especially apt when you plan on a substantial (but not too assertive) second course. The term pastina refers to various sorts of tiny pasta shapes used for soups. You can, of course, buy soup pasta in the store, but making your own fresh egg pasta brings this simple dish to another level. There are any number of fresh pastas that will do nicely for soup--Angelina made her own tagliolini cut into short lengths--but I particularly like the pasta called quadrucci.

Quadrucci are basically tagliatelle cut crosswise into little squares (hence the name...) You use the larger cutting blades on your mixer or pasta 'machine', the ones that look like this:

Roll out the pasta very thin, until it is practically translucent. It will look like this as it falls from the pasta maker:

You now have some fine tagliatelle (and why not make some extra for another time?) Line them up and cut them with a knife into little squares:

Keep going until you have as many as you like (remembering the rule of thumb: usual one egg per 100g/1 cup of pasta per person), separate them by tossing them gently, flouring them lightly so they don't stick to each other or to your working surface, and allow them to dry:

You are now ready to cook your quadrucci. Being so thin, they will cook very quickly, so you can simply drop them directly into your simmering broth. (Make sure to shake off any excess flour that might cling to them so as not to cloud the broth.) The quadrucci should take anywhere from 30 seconds (if they are very fresh) up to a minute or two, but no more. Add some chopped parsley if you like (it adds some color and subtle flavor) and serve immediately, with grated cheese on the side if those who want it.

NOTE: The term quadrucci is also used to describe a different egg pasta, also served in broth. It is a very rather square piece of pasta, with a parsley leaf in the middle that has been pressed between two thin sheets of pasta. It produces a beautiful effect for a special occasion. A fellow Foodbuzz members has blogged about it here. The kind of quadrucci described in this post, on the other hand, is for everyday eating.

While I associate this dish in my mind with the Emilia-Romagna region, I can't say for a fact that quadrucci originated there. And these days you can find dishes with quadrucci, not just in soup but also in various forms of pastasciutta, in a number of regions. It is available commercially in Italy but I have not seen them elsewhere. But being fairly easy to make, that should be no problem at all.

Al contadino non far sapere...

In our house dessert is usually a piece of fruit. But now that the weather is turning cooler, cheese, especially aged cheese, is making a reappearance on the dinner table. It's a great way to end off a meal and, of course, fruit and cheese are a divinely inspired combination. And by far the best fruit to eat with cheese are pears. In fact, the combination is so good that there is an old saying in Italian that goes:

Al contadino non far sapere,
Quant'è buono il cacio con le pere!

which means, "don't let the farmer know how good cheese is with pears!"--the idea being that, if the farmers knew, they'd keep all the cheese (and pears) for themselves! The saying, by the way, is cited in John Dickey's fascinating and provocative Delizia! The Epic History of Italians and Their Food as an example of how, despite its rustic reputation, Italian cooking is essential urban in its origins. (By therein lies another post...)

In any event, tonight's delightful conspiracy against the peasantry consisted of some beautifully spottled, sweet pears from the farmers' market and a wedge of St. Agur, a fabulous blue cheese from Auvergne. I adore blue cheeses, especially creamy blue cheeses, but this was the first time I had tasted this particular one. It was not too mild, not too sharp--and with pears it was truly sublime.

All sorts of aged cheese go well with pears. I particularly like blues, and until tonight my favorite was gorgonzola. Parmesan is a classic with pears. Personally, I would avoid cheeses that are either too mild like fontina, which would not provide sufficient contrast with the subtle sweetness of the pears, or too sharp, like pecorino romano, which would overwhelm the pears. (On the other hand, a less salty pecorino, like the percorino toscano, would be lovely.)

When fresh walnuts in the shell appear in the markets, they make for a perfect complement to both cheese and pear. After eating just those three, simple things and sipping a round red wine, I would be perfectly happy to bid farewell to this vale of tears...

Ravioli al sugo di pomodoro

Once you know how to make fresh pasta, there are myriad ways you can put your knowledge to delicious use. One of the most lovely types of fresh pasta are the ever-popular ravioli, which, as you probably know, are a kind of stuffed pasta, typically square with fluted edges.

The filling vary, but one of the most classic is a mixture of equal parts blanched swiss chard (spinach would also do nicely) and ricotta (to make enough ravioli for 4 people, use 200g or 1/2 lb. of each ingredient). Then season these main ingredients with a generous grinding of parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and a dash of freshly ground nutmeg. And, if you like, add an egg yolk as a binder for a firmer texture. Whiz these ingredients together in a food processor, using the pulse function to avoid over-processing, until the chard is well chopped but the mixture is not yet entirely uniform. The green of the chard and the white of the ricotta should remain distinguishable.

Once you've made your pasta dough, roll out it out quite thinly (setting 6 or 7 out of 8) one sheet at a time, and place it on your spianatoia. Working quickly so as not to allow the pasta to dry out, dot the pasta sheet at regular intervals on one side of the sheet with a dollop of the filling:

Then fold over the opposite side of the sheet and press down around the bits of filling so that the top layer of pasta adheres well to the bottom:

Then, using a fluted pasta cutter (or, in a pinch, simply a knife) cut the pasta into squares, each with filling at the center. Transfer the squares to a baking sheet covered with a towel:

You can know either cook the ravioli immediately or leave them until you need them. (NB: The longer you wait, the more the pasta will dry and the longer they will take to cook. )

When you are ready to cook your ravioli, place them into gently boiling, well-salted water:

Cooking time will vary quite a bit depending, among other things, on the type of flour you use, the thickness of the pasta sheets and how long the ravioli has been drying before cooking. It should not take more than a few minutes, however, in any case. The best way to know when the ravioli are done is simply to test them. Remember to test the thickest part of the ravioli--the double thickness of pasta around the filling. One useful tip from the Rouxbe Online Cooking School: to avoid cutting into a raviolo, you can save some of the pasta trimmings (making sure it includes a double layering of pasta) and throw a piece into the water to cook with the ravioli. Fish that piece out of the water to test doneness.

When your ravioli are done, remove a few of them gently with a slotted spoon and place them in a heated serving bowl. Top with your favorite sauce or other condimento (see Notes), and a bit of grated parmesan cheese:

Then add additional layers of ravioli, condiment and cheese, repeating until you have used up the ravioli, and serve immediately.

NOTES: There are a number of possible variations in both ingredients and technique. The spinach-and-ricotta filling is, as I said, a classic, but equally popular, especially in southern Italy, is a pure cheese filling made with ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan, chopped parsley and egg. (Angelina's sister, my great-aunt, who we all called Zi' Zi', was the family ravioli master, and her ravioli had this cheese filling.) In the cooler months, ravioli are often filled with zucca (Italian pumpkin)--about which more in a post in the near future. Ravioli can also be made with meat fillings, of course. and even, albeit less commonly, fish.

The pasta for ravioli is generally made with farina 00, but the pasta for commercial ravioli will often be made, in whole or in part, with semolina flour, which makes the ravioli much firmer than home-made, and requires a longer cooking time. The usual 1 egg to 100g of flour ratio applies, but because it is stuffed, the pasta goes twice as far, so that 2 eggs and 200g of flour should make enough pasta for 4 (rather than the usual 2) people. At least one source suggests lowering the egg-to-pasta ratio (eg, 6 eggs for 1 kilo of flour) for delicate fillings (those other than meat) and using water to make for a softer, more pliable dough. And just last night, I spoke to some foodie friends who suggested adding white wine to the dough, to the same effect.

To sauce these ravioli, I would recommend a basic sugo di pomodoro or light tomato sauce, made from a soffritto of oil and garlic, tomatoes and a few basil leaves, simmered for about 20 minutes and then passed through a food mill. Or make the soffritto with chopped onion, carrot and celery. This sauce is often called pomarola, or 'pummarola' in Neapolitan dialect. In the US, this kind of basic tomato sauce is often called a marinara sauce. Also very common is to simply dress the ravioli with butter melted with fresh sage leaves and seasoned with a bit of salt. Both are lovely. Simple butter and cheese would also be nice. Stuffed pastas (especially tortellini) are sometimes sauced with cream, but I wouldn't recommend it for this dish.

If you like, you can also add the ravioli to the saucepan and allow it to absorb the flavors of the sauce, as you often do with other pasta dishes. I do like the above in-the-bowl method for ravioli, especially when made with thinly rolled soft-wheat pasta, which can be a bit too delicate to stand up to both boiling in water and simmering in sauce.

Besides being a filling for ravioli, the ricotta and greens mixture, mixed with a bit of flour, can be made into gnocchi known variously as gnocchi di ricotta e spinaci, gnocchi verdi, ignudi, gnocchi nudi or malfatti. You can find the recipe on the Gnocchi ai funghi Club site, and I plan to blog on it one of these days.

Ravioli have been a part of Italian cooking for a long time. According to Wikipedia, the earliest mention of ravioli appear in the writings of Francesco di Marco, a merchant of Prato in the 14th century. In the mid-14th century Venetian manuscript Libro per cuoco offers ravioli very similar to these, filled with green herbs blanched and minced, mixed with beaten egg and fresh cheese, simmered in broth. In Rome, ravioli were already well-known when Bartomoleo Scappi served them with boiled chicken to the papal conclave of 1549. I recently purchased, by the way, Scappi's 1570 masterwork known as his Opera, subtitled L'arte et prudenza d'un maestro cuoco or The Art and Craft of a Master Cook. It actually contains a rather lengthy description of the conclave (which took place after the funeral of Pope Paul III) starting with the funeral mass and focusing at length on the logistics of serving the cardinals within the conclave. Oddly, though, Scappi says very little about the actually food served.

The world of stuffed pastas is incredibly diverse and the nomenclature can sometimes be confusing. The quintessential ravioli are square with fluted edges. But the term "ravioli" is sometimes used to mean stuffed pasta generally, so you can come across round stuffed pasta going by the name of ravioli. And then there are agnolotti, the Piedmontese stuffed pasta which are also square with a meat filling. And the name tortelli, which normally refers to round and folded stuffed pasta, a sort of older sibling of tortellini, is sometimes also used to describe what would otherwise might be called ravioli... For more information on stuffed pasta terms, ravioli.it provides an interesting discussion (in Italian only).