Mushroom Ravioli with Pancetta and Parmesan Sauce
Homemade pasta ravioli filled with three types of mushroom and garlic. Served with a creamy parmesan and pancetta sauce.
Method
- Prepare and refrigerate pasta dough. There are many detailed guides on the internet for making pasta dough if you haven't done it before, this one is a great guide from smitten kitten to the manual method:
- On a large work surface (or for safety, a bowl if this is a first attempt) pour the flour into a pile and make a well in the centre.
- Using your fingers, carefully stir the eggs. This will eventually draw the flour into the eggs and roughly combine the two ingredients.
- Knead until springy and combined, usually 10-15 mins. This is a key step!
- Divide the dough into 4 even weight pieces (ideally use scales).
- Flatten slightly to speed up refrigeration, then wrap each piece tightly with cling film. Place in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
- Cook and cool the ravioli filling:
- Place all of the prepared ingredients for the filling except the egg yolk into a large frying pan.
- Place over a low/medium heat and slowly cook down. The mixture needs to evaporate enough moisture to reduce in weight by about half. My mixture went from 950 g uncooked weight to 420 g cooked weight.
- Taste and adjust seasoning, this is the last moment you can do this so take the opportunity.
- Remove from the pan into a large mixing bowl and set aside to cool.
- When cool, add the egg yolk, mix well and set aside (refrigerate if not making the ravioli straight away).
- Cook the sauce:
- Place a frying pan over a medium/high heat. Bring up to temperature and add the olive oil.
- Fry the onion, pancetta and pepper in the pan until the onions are well softened.
- Pour in the white wine and allow to reduce slightly.
- Add the cream and parmesan. Allow this to heat through and reduce slightly, then remove from the heat. Cover and set aside whilst making the ravioli.
- Assemble the ravioli. There are many ways to do this but they all follow the same process - roll out two sheets of pasta dough, sandwich small amounts of filling between them, seal and then divide into ravioli:
- Take two dough balls out of the fridge, roll them out until they're thin. There are two main ways to rolling out the dough, both of which require patience:
- Use a rolling pin, a large stable work surface and plenty of dusted flour. This high gluten dough is difficult to roll out compared to pastry dough. It is far more elastic than other doughs and will try to spring back to shape. Just persevere, I find rolling with one hand and gently holding the dough with the other works well.
- Alternatively use a pasta machine. This will make much more uniform sheets than you can roll by hand, but also requires another kitchen gadget. See this good guide on using a pasta machine.
- Sandwich the filling between the two sheets, seal and divide. As with the rolling out, there are many ways to do this:
- Use a ravioli cutting wheel as described in this recipe.
- A ravioli stamp cutter is a more uniform alternative to the cutting wheel.
- Perhaps the thriftiest but least attractive way is to divide the ravioli using a knife (or pastry/pizza wheel) then use a fork to crimp the edges.
- My preferred method is to use a ravioli press. I use this tool from Lakeland. Over-engineered one time use kitchen gadgets usually annoy me, but this is useful and quite small!
- Place the finished ravioli onto a well floured piece of greaseproof paper.
- Take two dough balls out of the fridge, roll them out until they're thin. There are two main ways to rolling out the dough, both of which require patience:
- Cook the ravioli:
- Bring a very large pan of well salted water to the boil.
- At this point place the sauce back onto a low heat and stir occasionally to heat it through whilst cooking the ravioli.
- Carefully use a slotted spoon to lower the ravioli into the pan.
- The amount of time to cook will vary depending on the thickness of the ravioli. Mine took about 8 minutes, I sacrificed one ravioli and thermapen'd it to check the internal temperature.
- Drain and transfer them to the serving plate using a slotted spoon.
- Stir the chopped basil and lemon juice through the sauce, then spoon over the ravioli. Sprinkle with more chopped basil over the top.
Tips
- It is important to evaporate plenty of moisture from the filling. If the ravioli filling has too much water content you'll find yourself with split ravioli when boiling.
- Work fast once you've rolled out the dough, it doesn't take long to dry out! Try to roll out the dough and form ravioli in batches to avoid this.
- Pasta dough is easy to remember, 1 egg for every 100g of flour.
Pasta Ingredients
- Eggs
- 3
- Strong White Bread Flour
- 300 g
Ravioli Filling Ingredients
- Yellow Oyster Mushrooms
- 250 g, small dice
- Chestnut Mushrooms
- 250 g, small dice
- Shimejii Mushrooms
- 50 g, small dice
- Onion
- 2 large (350 g), very finely chopped
- Garlic
- 3 large cloves (20 g), minced
- Butter
- 40 g
- Egg Yolk
- 1 large
- Black Pepper
- 2 tsp
- Salt
- 1 tsp
Sauce Ingredients
- Onion
- 1 large, finely chopped
- Pancetta
- 70 g, small cubes
- Parmesan
- 100 g, finely grated
- Double Cream
- 100 ml
- White Wine
- 150 ml
- Fresh Basil
- 28 g (small bunch), roughly chopped
- Olive oil
- 2 tbsp
- Black Pepper
- 1 tsp
- Lemon Juice
- 1 tbsp