A Dinner Party with The Mercantile

Last weekend some of the Mercantile girls had a dinner party hosted by Beth! From homemade focaccia to the best chocolate mousse we've ever had, as well as a special ricotta stuffed pasta where you can find the recipe below.

  

Ricotta Stuffed Ravioli with a Pecorino Sauce

for 4 people

Equipment needed:

• Pasta machine
• Piping bag
• Ravioli cutter

The Pasta:

• 200g 00 flour
• 1 egg (equivalent to 50g)
• 4 tbsp cold water
• Optional fresh herb leafs (basil, flat leaf parsley etc.) 
• Ground semolina flour for dusting

The Ravioli Filling:

• 300g fresh ricotta
• 50g butter (melted)
• 3 tbsp grated parmesan
• A pinch of nutmeg
• Freshly ground white pepper
• Salt to taste

The Pecorino Sauce

• 200g fresh pecorino cheese grated
• 40g butter
• 1 clove of garlic
• 250ml double cream

To make the dough...

Sift your flour onto a clean surface and make a well in the middle in the middle and tip the egg and water in. Using a fork, whisk the egg and water in quickly while incorporating the flour from the edges. It is important to work fast at this stage as egg based pasta can dry and harden quite quickly is it is not being worked.

Once everything is mixed together, use your hands to start working the ingredients into a ball and kneading it. To produce gluten, you should not press too hard into the work surface but roll the dough while folding it to make sure you are smoothing it all out. While kneading it, you don't want a sticky dough so, have a little extra flour on hand to give you the correct consistency, but if it is crumbly just splash your hands under the tap and work a little liquid in that way.

You will knead it for around 10 minutes and you should have a smooth, firm ball of dough which is not damp to the touch at all. Wrap your dough up in cling film and leave out for about 30 minutes for it to rest and develop.

The Make the Ravioli Filling...

Start off by putting your ricotta in a sieve to drain any excess liquid off and discard it. Add your drained ricotta, melted butter, nutmeg (I like to be heavy handed with it) the egg and plenty of salt and pepper into a bowl and mix it all together until it is smooth.  Check the flavouring of it and add any extra nutmeg or seasoning depending on how strong you like it.

Transfer the filling to a piping bag and store it in the fridge until your dough is rolled out.

Rolling out the Pasta...

Divide you pasta into two balls and keep one in the cling film so it doesn't dry out. Start rolling the other ball through your machine, starting on the lowest setting and running it through three times on the first go, and only once for the rest. 

If you want to press herbs into the pasta to add that visual element, on your second to last width setting, halve the dough so you have two slightly shorter pieces. Take your herbs and lay them out onto one of the pasta sheets, lightly pressing them in. Once you have the desired amount, lay the other piece on top and carefully feed the sheet through with the herbs pressed between the two layers. Finish off the rolling process on the thinnest setting on your machine and the laying your long sheet out.

Assembling the Ravioli...

You should have one long sheet of pasta now, which you can cut in half to make two shorter pieces. It is important to move quickly so that the pasta doesn't dry out, so you can start piping out two centimetres of ravioli filling onto one of the sheets while keeping the other covered with a tea towel. They should be quite spaced out to make sure you have enough dough to seal around the filling.

If the dough seems quite dry, you can brush a little water  around the piped out filling to make sure it is sealed. Take your other rolled out sheet and lay it on top on the filling and start pressing around them, being careful to not break the pockets of filling.

Take your ravioli cutter and score along the sheets to create your square raviolis. Dust the pasta pieces with the semolina flour to ensure they done stick to the surface. Repeat this process until all of the dough is used up.

Making the Pecorino Sauce...

Melt the butter in a pan and add the crushed garlic for a few minutes. Once the garlic and butter has cooked for 1 min, add the cream in and let it cook on a low heat for 3 mins. When you are getting ready to serve, stir in your pecorino cheese and add white pepper and salt to your taste. If you want a looser sauce, you can splash in a little of the starchy pasta water from the ravioli.

Cooking the pasta...

Get a large, tall saucepan and fill it 3/4 with water and bring to a boil. Add a generous helping of salt and a drizzle of olive oil to the boiled water, and carefully tip in your raviolis.

They cook very quickly so keep an eye on them, they will only take a couple of minutes so make sure you test them before you carefully drain them. 

Discard of any burst parcels and tip your pecorino sauce over the raviolis to make sure they are well coated in the sauce. Enjoy!