In recent months I've blogged from all over Europe, relishing the opportunity to travel & cook & eat in some really cool places. This Friday night just gone, at home in Mt Eden, sitting around the back in the courtyard, a bottle of wine half drunk & about to try my own serving of this week's fridaynightdinnerbox dish, I looked up through the pergola & saw the moon resting above us, in a blue blue evening sky supported by the Pohutakawas that grow on Maungawhau's western slopes, just over the back wall. As nice an evening as any for the world to end, I thought, & there's no place I'd rather be. As for the dish itself, raviolis of smoked salmon, home made pasta, a puree of roasted capsicums, steamed broccoli & green beans, a baby spinach & toasted walnut salad. I think it fair to say one of the nicest so far.
Smoked salmon is tricky to cook with, I guess because it is usually the hero & as such is served as itself, rather than as an ingredient. Rather than take a fillet & smoke it myself, as I did in a recent post on this blog, I decided to use what most people get when they buy smoked salmon - the finely sliced cold smoked version that comes in a packet. Admittedly not exactly the cheapest choice of ingredients, nevertheless this was my starting point this week. I bought the Regal brand, which to my mind is as good as any available on the shelves here in New Zealand. Truth be told, sliced cold smoked salmon is a convenience item I don't like my refrigerator shelves to be without, certainly it's always good to have on hand for emergencies if it comes to that, though usually I lavish it with toasted bagels, cream cheese & capers for breakfast, whenever I feel the need. Anyway, having a supply for breakfast the morning after the end of the world is nothing if not being prepared for an emergency!
To the recipe - there are three parts to the dish: the sauce, the pasta, the filling. Regards the order of things, the sauce takes longest so is started first. While sauciness happens, the pasta is mixed, rolled & rested. While pasta rests, the filling is blitzed in the blitzer & set aside...then its simply a matter of forming the raviolis & cooking them off. As an aside, because I suffer from siege mentality I like to make extras & freeze them in zip-lock bags, for a rainy day.
Ingredients: roast red pepper sauce:
3 onions sliced, 3 cloves of garlic sliced, sprigs of thyme & oregano, bay, salt
about a kilo of ripe tomatoes, cut in half
3 red capsicums, a little olive oil over them
olive oil & butter for cooking
Method:
*set the oven to C220°
*warmed cast iron pan, onion/garlic/herb bundle/salt/knob of butter & drizzle of olive oil
*heat the pan hot, cover, put into the oven for 30 mins
*check every 10 mins after that, without shaking the onions about, until nice & caramelised
*same oven, tomatoes cut side down, oiled pan, top shelf at the back, pan roasted 10-15min
*same oven, red capsicums rub with olive oil, top shelf, turned when blackened 10-15min
*when done (see pics) remove the bay leaves & herb sprig sticks, push the skin or of the tomatoes, wrap the capsicums in a towel til cool then slip the skin off & scoop out the seeds, putting pulp & juices into a bowl with onion mix & tomatoes & purée (blender/stick blender)
300g flour, 3 larger eggs, splash of olive oil, salt
*mix all together in a bowl, making a well in the flour for the eggs
*the dough, once formed, should rest about an hour under a damp cloth
*divided into manageable portions, roll each out flat for your pasta machine, starting wide & adjusting the settings by degrees to the finest, folding & stretching the elasticity of the dough as you go
-in the absence of a pasta machine, a rolling pin works ok, though it is a little more work
*rolled out, the pasta is ready to be cooked at this point, cut in strips for tagliatelle or spaghetti, in sheets for lasagne. The pasta dries quickly, so it's best not to roll out the sheets for ravioli making until the filling is ready.
Ingredients: ravioli filling: smoked salmon & mascarpone
smoked salmon slices, mascarpone, garlic chives,
roasted red peppers in brine,
sweet paprika, cayenne pepper, Marlborough salt crystals
-in terms of quantity, let taste govern: to 200g of salmon, I used a 120g pouch of mascarpone, 3 finely diced garlic chives, 2 whole red peppers, a little sweet paprika, the same of cayenne
Method: the filling:
*put all together in a blender & pulse in short bursts to blitz, keeping a little texture
- try not to reduce the mix to a smooth paste
*correct the seasoning
Method: bringing it all together:
*put a nice big pot of salted (so it tastes like the sea) water on the stove, bring to a rolling boil
*lay out sheets of pasta on a lightly floured benchtop, brushing lightly with a beaten egg
*lay out little teaspoonful dollops of filling intermittently, keeping it clean & allowing room between each mound for the cutter, as well as room in from each side
*carefully lay the top sheet over, slow;y & gently applying a little pressure to the fold on each side of the little piles of filling
*carefully apply firm pressure around each ravioli, trying not to allow any air pockets, & cut out (or press out) ravioli shapes
-ravioli cutting trays are available, in fact by chance I just now caught an episode of Rick Stein's Food Heroes on tv in which he makes a pumpkin & amaretti biscuit ravioli using a ravioli tray, successfully, & he did look pretty chuffed (& a little surprised) when it worked so well, I guess a much easier method...however, I like my way
*in batches of 20-30, depending on size, drop raviolis in the boiling water; the nice big pot is so that the water stays on the boil at this point
*cooking time is 3-4 mins only, but because mine were packaged into noodle boxes for delivery i gave them 2 mins only then transferred them with a slotted spoon to a bowl of iced water. Cooking would be completed when the noodle boxes were reheated later, with raviolis in their sauce
*once cold, raviolis transferred to another container with sauce, for portioning/reheating
To serve, tossed a salad of baby spinach leaves with alfa sprouts & toasted walnuts, all broken up. I layed this in the bottom of my bowl, the raviolis in sauce over the top, walnuts sprinkled over this & a tiny bit of grated parmesan cheese. I blanched spears of broccoli, green beans & peas & tossed them with a little butter, lemon juice, crushed black & red pepper, laying them around the edge of the dish. Frankly, it was sensational.
A strange thing, but I couln't get enough. The fridaynightdinnerboxes each contained 15 raviolis, with sauce enough to coat & cover, but not enough that they were swimming. Little parcels of yumminess. It made for a rich mouthful, & what with veg & salad was just enough, though I found myself wanting more & more. I'm almost ashamed to say I found myself rolling out more pasta later on, the result being that I ate more indeed than was decent...again!
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