Pumpkin and Ricotta Tortellini

Yes, more pumpkin, this time stuffed in tortellini (belly buttons). I've always had issues with filled pasta. Often they get stuck together, burst during the cooking process, or cook unevenly. As it can be a fairly time consuming process, at least for me, this is quite frustrating. I am keen to improve my skills, however, and over the last couple of weeks have tried out a few different variations. My results are steadily improving and on the last batch not one tortellini burst! I roll out the pasta to a 5 on my machine, about 1mm thick. You want it to be strong but also thin enough to become silky when cooked. Do not overfill them, a teaspoon should be enough, otherwise you will have difficulty sealing them, which must be done thoroughly. Try to remove all air bubbles when you seal them, but do not become paranoid, you also don't want to smush the filling out. When storing prior to cooking, try to keep each tortellini separated, so they don't get the chance to stick together. Cook on a gentle boil, pushing the tortellini down to ensure even cooking time. the edges will always be a little harder than the centre, to minimise this, when filling firmly press down the edges with your hand or a mini rolling pin.

Ingredients: 

Pumpkin mix:

1 butternut pumpkin, or half a jap  

2 tsps coriander seeds 

2 tsps dried oregano 

1/2 tsp fennel seeds 

2 small dried chillies

1 tsp salt

pepper

1 clove of garlic

1 tblsp extra virgin olive oil 

1 handful of basil, picked and roughly chopped or torn

255g ricotta cheese*

1-2handfuls parmesan cheese, grated

pepper and salt 

2 handfuls of mixed fresh herbs (time, sage, oregano)
handful slivered almonds, toasted

basic pasta dough (i use three eggs to 300g of flour when making tortellini for four)

Method:

Pre-eat the oven to 190*C. Chop the pumpkin into even sized chunks. Put all the dried herbs in a mortar and pestle and pound them up with salt and pepper to make a fine powder. Add the garlic and pound it into the spices. toss the pumpkin in the olive oil and then coat with the spice mixture. Place in the oven and roast for 30 to 40 minutes, until it is tender and golden. 

When it is cool, smash up the pumpkin mixture roughly. Put all the pumpkin into a bowl with the basil, ricotta and most of the parmesan. Fork through and taste for seasoning. 

Roll out the pasta to 1mm thick and cut out circles, about 8-10cm wide. Place a teaspoon of filling slightly off centre and fold over the wider side to enclose the filling. Wet around the edge with a little water. To seal the edges, cup you hand and curl your fingers around the pouch of filling, pressing down firmly. Flip the tortellini over and bring the two edges together over your index finger and press together. Cook in salted boiling water for 4 to 5 minutes, until tender. 

Fry off the herbs in some butter or olive oil until crispy and scatter over the pasta along with the slivered almonds, or just serve with parmesan and a few dobs of butter. 

You will probably have some left over pumpkin mixture, it is great on toast. 

*Making ricotta is fairly easy. Google a recipe, or simple bring a litre of milk with a teaspoon of salt to near boiling point (90*C), then remove from the heat and add 2 tblsp of lemon juice or white. Stir and then let sit for 5-10 minutes. Stain through a sieve lined with a piece of muslin. Leave for an hour or so to drain, depending on how firm you want it. Use the left-over whey as you would buttermilk.   

Recipe source: The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver 

Tortellini made with spinach pasta!

Pumpkin, Sweet Potato and Hazelnut Salad

It was my mum’s birthday the other day and my gift was to cook her dinner (a bit cheap, perhaps, but the best I can manage at the moment). For the main, I made spinach tortellini stuffed with herbed ricotta. As I get tired cutting, filling and folding the tortellini fairly quickly I can never make too many and so needed a fairly substantial salad to accompany them. Pumpkins have been fabulous this year and hazelnuts provide a nice alternative to the ubiquitous pine nut. I used beetroot leave but baby spinach, rocket or any lettuce greens would do.

Ingredients:

½ butternut pumpkin (or other variety)

1 medium purple sweet potato, peeled

1/3 cup hazelnuts

Half cup of labne (or goats curd or feta)

3 handfuls of greens, rinsed and spun

1 tblsp lemon juice

3 tblsp extra virgin olive oil

Cut clove of garlic

Salt and pepper

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190*C. lightly toast the nuts, wrap in a tea-towel allow to cool and then rub the skins off. Chop the pumpkin and peeled sweet potato into 2cm by 2cm cubes, toss with 1 tblsp of the olive oil, salt and pepper and place on a lined tray and in the oven for 30-40mins, until golden and tender, turning with a spatula every so often to promote even baking. Once cooked, remove and allow to cool to warm or room temp. To make the dressing combine the lemon juice and remaining olive oil, salt and pepper in a cup and whisk until combined. Rub a salad bowl with the cut garlic, add the greens and a little dressing, toss to combine. Add the  pumpkin mix, hazelnuts and top with labne/cheese and drizzle over the rest of the dressing. 

Panforte

Every year at around this time my family and I head up to the mid north coast for a week or two. I am probably too old to still be going on family holidays but I love it too much to give it up just yet. Boomerang Beach, a 20 minute drive from Foster, will always be my favourite beach in the world. It is the perfect length for a mildly strenuous jog and in a gentle nor-easter there is no place better to be. Swimming conditions this year were superb; gentle surf and warm water. We were also lucky with the weather, considering the all-round abysmal summer it has been, and had plenty of sunny days. For the last few years I have made a couple of panforte to take away with us. They travel well and improve with age, making them the perfect holiday treat. Serve a thin(ish) slice with coffee and savour slowly. Heaven. 

Ingredients:

140g/1 cup hazelnuts

310g/2 cups blanched almonds (see below)

320g/2 cups unsalted macadamia nuts

120g unsalted raw pistachio nuts (if available, otherwise make up the wight with the other nuts)

200g dried figs or apricots, thinly sliced

300g/2 cups good quality dark chocolate, chopped

600g honey

115g raw or white caster sugar

185g plain flour

2 tblsp unsweetened dutch cocoa powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg

Method:

Toast the nuts, keeping each type separate, on baking paper lined trays in a hot oven to a pale golden. Rub the hot hazelnuts in a clean cloth to remove the skins (or as much as will come off). Combine the hot nuts and sliced figs. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water. 

In a heavy based saucepan, gently heat the honey and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and remove from the heat. Add the melted chocolate and beat well using a wooden spoon. 

Stir the flour, cocoa and spices into the nut and flour mixture, stir to mix, then add the chocolate and honey syrup. Do this fairly quickly as the mixture will be quite stiff. Distribute between the two tins, smoothing the top. 

Bake for 45-50 minutes. The cake should be firm but still quite glossy looking. It is almost better a little undercooked, where only the edges dry out a little and the centre is soft and chewy. 

From "Crave: A Passion for Chocolate", Maureen McKeon    

Blanched Almonds

Blanched (skinned) almonds are expensive, far more so than regular almonds. I had no idea that you could skin them yourself, until the Greek lady at the vegetable shop enlightened me. The process is simple but a little time consuming. All you need to do is place the required number of almonds into a heat proof bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for 3-4 minutes, drain and dry with a tea towl. Leave to cool slightly and then slip of the skins. Most will come off easily but there will be a few stubborn ones that won't budge. Once peeled, spread them out onto an oven tray and dry out in a hot oven for 8 minutes or so. 

Plum Jam

The steady rain we've had this summer over much of NSW has at least meant that everything is green and growing like crazy. My mum managed to pick these little plums before the birds got to them. They are so juicy that they are bursting at the seams. A little tart, however, they are perfect for making jam. They clung to their stones pretty tight but i got a reasonable amount of flesh, about 650g, from a kilo bag. It is important to reserve the stones, tie them up in a muslin bag and add them to the pot for pectin. The jam set perfectly, is sweet but retains a nice touch of tartness. It is also a beautiful colour. Be careful not to over boil. I noticed that the syrup went a slightly darker colour just as it reached boiling point. Keep a saucer in the freezer and every so often drip a teaspoon full of syrup onto it, allow it to cool and push it gently with the back of a spoon. At first it will run freely, but as it reaches setting point it will thicken up and offer a little resistance to the spoon. 

Ingredients:

650g plums, destoned (stones reserved and tied in a muslin bag)

300g water (around half the weight of the fruit)

400g raw sugar (more or less to taste)

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 50*C. Wash 3 or so jam jars, rinse with boiling water, place on a tea-towl lined tray and into the oven to dry. Place the sugar in a heat proof bowl and into the oven to warm up. Place the fruit, water and stones in a pot and simmer until the fruit and skins are soft. Remove from the heat. Stir in the sugar. Return to a high heat and boiling, testing every so often, until boiling point is reached. Remove from the heat, remove the bag of stones and ladle into jam jars. 

Ox-tail Ragu

I wish I was cool with eating offal but I’m not, just the thought of tucking into a plate of sautéed lambs brains or roasted cow heart makes me feel queasy. I am ok with tails, though, specifically ox-tails. I buy them from the Marion Plains people at the markets and it comes chopped in chunks, so I can mostly forget that it's a tail. As is the rule with muscular cuts of meat, long slow cooking is the way to go. Steaks do nothing for me, but  braised beef, tender and falling off the bone, makes me salivate. This recipe comes from the Careme pastry website and is used to make individual pies. Whenever I make them there is always some mixture left over. It is very rich on its own but mixed with some passata makes the perfect ragu for fresh tagliatelli or papperdelle.

Ingredients: 

Approx. 1.4kg Oxtail

Olive oil

1 carrot diced

1 brown onion diced

1 celery stalk diced

4 plump cloves garlic sliced

500ml full bodied red wine (Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon)

2 x 400g tin plum tomatoes

Zest of one orange

1 tablespoon fennel seeds ground

1 tablespoon black peppercorns ground

3 sprigs rosemary

2 bay leaves

500ml vegetable stock

tomato passata 

See here for fresh pasta

Method:

Preheat oven to 160C*. Pre heat pan, season and lightly flour the meat. Add a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan once hot and seal meat in batches. Remove and set to one side. Now add the carrot, onion, celery and garlic to the same pan, scraping the bottom of the pan to remove any meat residue, sauté until soft.

Return meat to the pan add the wine, tomatoes, orange zest, spices, herbs and stock, ensuring the meat is submerged, if need be top up with a little water or more stock. Bring to a simmer, cover with lid and place in the oven for 4 hours.

Once cooked remove meat from the pan and set aside to cool. Once cool enough to handle pick the meat from the bones – discard bones.

Reduce the remaining sauce by approximately half until rich and thick – check sauce for seasoning. Once reduced add meat back to the sauce, remove from heat and transfer to a container and place in the fridge to cool (ideally for 24 hours).

Use to make pies or add 3 (or to taste) cups of passata to 1 cup of the oxtail mixture. 

Meat Patties

It's dangerous to make general comments about hamburgers. They have the potential to make a tasty, nutritious and satisfying meal. Obviously, though, there are also the bad sort. For an experiment, one of my sister's friends ate a month old maccas hamburger that hadn't been kept in the fridge, just in its original packaging. And they were fine! Apparently the burger looked the same and tasted pretty much the same as a fresh one. That is disturbing on so many levels. Anyway, on the flip side, home made burger patties: easy to make and they freeze very well. Serve them however you desire. At the moment my favourite combo is hummus, tomato and rocket on toasted sourdough. 

Meat Patties:

Ingredients:

500g organic chuck steak, trimmed (leave some fat) 

olive oil 

1 brown onion, finely sliced

1 clove of garlic, finely sliced

1 chilli (or to taste) finely chopped

handful of parsley, chopped

tbslp chopped rosemary

1/2 cup of fresh breadcrumbs

1/4 cup milk 

salt and pepper

Method:

Heat up a small frypan over a low heat, add the oil, add the onion and chilli and cook slowly until the onion is translucent, but no browning. Add the garlic cook for 30 seconds or so. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk. Grind up the meat, add some salt and pepper, the herbs, onion mix and breadcrumbs. Shape into 5 balls and flatten into patties, wrap in cling wrap and freeze, or place in the fridge for half and hour or so to firm up before cooking. Cook on a griddle pan set over low to medium heat on each side until cooked through, about 5-7 mins each side. Serve preferred way. 

Serves 5.