Home made Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli with Butter Sage sauce

   Home made pasta... a cooking technique in a league of its own! 1000 times more difficult than buying a bag of pasta and boiling it. It takes a free day and a lot of patience. So if you find yourself on a cold winter day with nothing better to do and you feel playful, try this recipe and enjoy the amazing feeling of tasting fresh pasta made with your own two hands.

Ingredients for 2 servings:

Filling:

- 50g boiled or steamed spinach

- 1/2 cup ricotta

- 1 small onion

- 2 tbsp parm cheese (and some for grating at the end)

- salt and pepper

Dough (Jamie Oliver's recipe):

- 100g 000 flour (add extra for rolling out)

- 1 egg (+1 extra for egg wash)

Sauce:

- 4 tbsp butter

- 8 leaves of sage

- juice of half a lemon

Steps:

1. Preparing the filling

- Blend your boiled or steamed spinach until it's soft, then just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl until they form a smooth paste. Keep tasting to make sure it is seasoned properly.

2. Making the dough (the most time consuming)

- Start by making sure you have plenty reserves of patience. Then place the flour on a board or in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and crack the egg into it. Beat the egg with a fork until smooth. Using the tips of your fingers, mix the egg with the flour, incorporating a little at a time, until everything is combined. Knead the pieces of dough together – with a bit of work and some love and attention they’ll all bind together to give you one big, smooth lump of dough! 

- Once you’ve made your dough you need to knead and work it with your hands to develop the gluten in the flour, otherwise your pasta will be flabby and soft when you cook it, instead of springy and al dente. 

- There’s no secret to kneading. You just have to bash the dough about a bit with your hands, squashing it into the table, reshaping it, pulling it, stretching it, squashing it again. It’s quite hard work, but don't give up! You’ll know when to stop – it’s when your pasta starts to feel smooth and silky instead of rough and floury. 

- Then all you need to do is wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge to rest for at least half an hour before you use it. Make sure the cling film covers it well or it will dry out and go crusty round the edges (this will give you crusty lumps through your pasta when you roll it out, and nobody likes crusty lumps!). It's very important to let the dough rest. Do not skip this step.

3. Rolling the dough: 

- It's easier if you have a pasta machine, but don't despair if you don't. The main problem you'll have (if you're using your rolling pin and not a pasta machine) is getting the pasta thin enough to work with. It's quite difficult to get a big lump of dough rolled out in one piece, and you need a very long rolling pin to do the job properly. The way around this is to roll lots of small pieces of pasta rather than a few big ones. 

4. Adding the filling:

- Once you rolled the pasta in a thin layer (around 1-2 mm), you need to add a full teaspoon of filling at a time (leave around 2 cm on each side of the filling to be able to fold the dough), put egg wash all around the filling and fold the dough over the filling. Gently press the air out around the filling, then start cutting squares or circles between the fillings. To make the ravioli even prettier, put a very small glass on top of the filling (try to find one that is as big as the filling "ball"), then press with your fingers on the dough around the filling to release all the air left. You'll end up with perfectly shaped circular ravioli filling sitting in a square dough.

5. Making the sauce (right before boiling the ravioli):

- Add the butter, sage and lemon juice together in a pan at medium heat until the butter melts and the sage infuses its flavour into the butter.

6, Boiling the pasta and adding the sauce:

- Put a small pot of water to boil adding a bit of salt. When it starts boiling, add your ravioli for 1:30 min, then take them out and coat them in the butter sage sauce. Plate around 5 ravioli per serving, making sure you leave the sage leaves in the pan.

7. Enjoy!

- Add some grated parm cheese on top and let yourself be delighted by the delicious taste of the spinach ricotta filling and the silky pasta combined with the tingy lemon-sage sauce. Bon appetit!