Spinach-ricotta ravioli

Before you start

• a rolling pin and a clear table — a pasta machine if you own one
• about 1h30 from flour to plate
• the dough rests 30 minutes before it can be rolled

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 150gplain flour — tipo 00 if the shop has it; plain works
• 2eggs
• 200gspinach
• 150gricotta cheese
• 25gparmesan
• 15gbutter — browned with a few sage leaves at the end
• to tastenutmeg

Method

7 steps

1. fold · 9m

   Flour in a heap, eggs into a well in the middle, forked in from the inside out and then kneaded for a solid eight minutes until the dough is smooth, tight and springs back when pressed. It looks far too dry for the first three of those minutes. Keep going rather than adding water.

2. rest · 30m walk away

   Wrapped and left on the side. Rolled straight away it fights back and pings shut every time you thin it; rested, the same dough goes translucent without arguing.

3. boil · 8m

   Spinach into boiling water for a minute, into cold, then wrung out in a cloth until genuinely dry and chopped fine.

4. fold · 6m

   Ricotta drained in a sieve if it is at all wet, then beaten with the spinach, parmesan, nutmeg and salt. A wet filling steams inside the parcel and pushes the seams open in the pot.

5. chop · 22m

   Dough halved and rolled out thin enough to see your hand through it. Teaspoons of filling spaced along one sheet, the second laid over, and the air pressed out from the middle outwards before the edges are sealed — trapped air is what bursts them. Cut and pinched shut.

6. boil · 5m

   Into a wide pan at a lazy roll, never a hard boil, which tears fresh pasta apart. Three or four minutes, and they are done shortly after they float.

7. finish · 4m

   Butter melted in a wide pan with the sage until it foams and smells nutty, ravioli lifted in with a slotted spoon and turned through it, more parmesan.