Monday : Tortellini

It's been more than two years since the last time I made pasta, and since something turned out oddly that time the whole process was a pain in the ass. This left me with a silly "pasta making? no!" attitude. After reading Heat I really needed to make pasta, so I was able to get past that yesterday.

Since Andrea and I both had the day off work (Basler Fasnacht), and the weather was crap we could devote some substantial time to the process, so we decided to make tortellini. This was a purely Hazan-driven show: I used her recipes for pasta (which worked without problems), the tortellini filling, and the tomato sauce.

The filling: well-drained ricotta cheese, parsley, egg yolk, salt, nutmeg.
I rolled out the pasta and cut it and Andrea took care of forming the tortellini. We ended up with about 90 of them, so there are a couple more meals in the freezer. mmm.

The sauce: tomato sauce with heavy cream : tomatoes, celery, carrot, onion, butter, and salt. Long simmered and then put through the food mill. Heavy cream just before serving.

After boiling the tortellini, I served them on a bed of the sauce.

To go along with this really, really excellent food, I caramelized some small brussel sprouts that we picked up at the market on Saturday (cut sprouts in half, cook cut-side down with a bit of salt over medium heat in olive oil that has been flavored with garlic and chili).

Of course we also had a green salad.