Day 3: Spinach and ricotta agnolotti

May 16, 2020

Little green parcels of joy.

Anecdote

Maybe save this one for the weekend as there are a few steps and it's a bit fiddly. We winged the filling and dough ratios but they worked out pretty well.

Ingredients

Agnolotti dough:

  • 200g 00 flour

  • 1/3 of the 200g spinach

  • 1 egg

Filling:

  • 200g spinach (1/3 of this was for the dough)

  • 250g ricotta

  • 1/2 lemon zest

  • 1 grated garlic clove

  • Grated parmesan

  • Olive oil

Recipe

First thing first, you're going to need to blanche the spinach.

  1. Boil a pot of water. Add a pinch of salt and the 200g of spinach

  2. Blanche it for around 60 seconds, then drain and transfer to an ice bath

  3. Once slightly cooled, drain and place into a muslin cloth. Squeeze out as much moisture as you can

  4. Cut the spinach ball into thirds, setting aside 1/3 and the other 2/3 for the filling

Dough:

  1. Take the 1/3 of the spinach you set aside and add to a blender with one whole egg. Blend until smooth

  2. Measure out the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the centre

  3. Pour the spinach and egg mixture into the well with a pinch of salt, and whisk with a fork, slowly incorporating the flour

  4. Once it's coming together, turn out onto a clean work surface and knead for 5-10 minutes until smooth

  5. Cover the dough in clingfilm and rest for 30 minutes

While the dough is resting, turn your attention to the filling.

Filling:

  1. Add the ricotta and lemon zest to a large bowl. Grate in 1 clove of garlic. Add a little drizzle of olive oil and mix to combine

  2. Grate in as much parmesan as you desire (we used a generous handful) and mix again

  3. Season to taste with S&P, transfer to a piping bag and set aside

Assembly:

  1. Split the dough in halves, keeping the dough you aren't working with covered

  2. Take your dough and roll into a rectangle, then roll it through your pasta machine, starting at the thickest setting and working your way to the thinnest one by one

  3. Cut the sheet in half so that it's easier to work with (we had two sets of hands and still struggled to manage it, look how long it got!)

  4. Pipe the filling along the entire sheet about 1/3 of the way in from the side, leaving a bit of room on either end (a bit more than you see in the image below)

  5. Roll the dough over the filling, pressing down next to the filling to seal it, try to remove as much air as possible when doing this

  6. Roll the dough up onto itself so that it's standing up

  7. Working your way along the sheet of dough using both hands, pinch the dough together spaced apart to form little pillows of filling with sealed edges

  8. Trim along the sheet of dough to remove the any excess

  9. Using a pasta roller, come from the back of the dough to cut in-between the pillows where you pinched, the pasta should roll onto itself as you do this, forming little agnolotti

  10. Boil a pot of water and salt it heavily. Boil the pasta for about 2 minutes until they're puffy and floating

  11. Drain and divide between two bowls, sprinkle with a little olive oil and grate on as much parmesan and lemon zest as you'd like