TORTELLINI

I would like to share the recipe for tortellini

I had this in Modena-the region where it's originally from-cooked by a real Italian Mamma!



The recipe I'm publishing here is actually from a Bologna local- a Bolognese?? - with his own wonderful website and I think his recipe is the closest to the original.

So here's Alessandro Guerani's Recipe from his Foodografia website:


TORTELLINI

The following ingredients are for about 12 persons.

The pastry
2,2 lbs flour, 8 eggs.
Pound the flour with the eggs until you'll get a homogeneous dough. Spread the dough upon a flour covered table and roll it out until you get a very thin pastry without holes in it. Cut then the pastry in squares large 1 and half inches at max.

The filling
3.5 ozs turkey breast, 3.5 ozs veal meat, 3.5 ozs pork lean meat, 3.5 ozs Parma ham, 3.5 ozs Bologna sausage, 7 ozs grinded parmesan cheese, 1 egg, butter, salt, powdered nutmeg.
Brown the turkey, pork and the veal meat in some butter. When they'll be well cooked, put them together with the ham and the bologna in a meat grinder. Add then the parmesan cheese, the egg, the salt and the nutmeg. Blend all the ingredients together until you get a homogenous mixture.

Closing the "tortellino"
It's the harder part of the recipe but after a bit of practicing and some waste you'll get some results, maybe not perfect but palatable.
Going to the practical side you have to bend the square of pastry, with some filling inside, to form a triangle. Grasp then the two corners of longest side of the triangle and push them behind, until they overlap, then you can join them together with some finger pressure.
The first ones you'll create won't be good looking for sure, but try to taste them (tortellini are good to eat even raw). If they taste good in your mouth then you succeded!

The stock
2.2 lbs beef, 1 lb spongy beef bone, 1 lb beef tongue, 2.2 lbs chicken or capon meat, 1 carrot, 1 celery rib, 1 onion, 2.5-3 galons of water, salt.
Tortellini must be cooked in some stock. There are no alternatives, don't even ask! The stock must be prepared with the above ingredients that you have to left to cook in the water for about 4 hours.
I really enjoyed it :)!