An alternative for a holiday fish first course
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 4 € pp)
- Salt
- 200 g fresh pasta with eggs
- 300 g already desalted cod filets
- A very well boiled small potato (about 50 g)
- EV Olive oil
- 1 garlic clove
- 300 ml tomato purée
- 10 gr pine nuts
- 10 gr raisins
- black pepper
- Fresh parsley
I love the cod raviolis. Actually I love everything that contains cod. Cod, garlic, radicchio, sardines, all dry nuts, chestnuts ……..
– Fuck off, man. People is not interested in your favourite ingredients. They just wait for the ravioli recipe.
– OK, I stop. As we already have learnt the pasta dough used for stuffing must be more elastic and more durable than the common fresh dough, so it is used pasta dough with eggs which contains not only flour but also semolina and it is also made with more yolks than usual. This pasta dough must also be much thinner (almost transparent) than the common one, as we can see at the guide of the guides for the fresh pasta.
– Which one do you mean?
– Mine, of course. You can find it here. So we prepare our special enforced pasta dough for stuffing and we put it in the fridge to rest.
Meanwhile we “roast” the pine nuts, taking care not to burn them and we put the raisins to soak in lukewarm water.
Meanwhile we start preparing the ravioli filling. We cut the cod filets in pieces and we boil them for about 2 minutes. We wait them a little bit to cool and we remove all of the spines very very carefully. At the same water we boil the small potato, peeled and cut in pieces till very tender.
We put the cod, the boiled potato, 10 ml of olive oil and some fresh parsley in a cup and with an immersion blender we turn them to a purée. We check the saltiness, adding some, if required.
We remove the pasta from the fridge and we leave them for about 30 min at room temperature. We cut it in pieces and we start passing it from the pasta machine till we obtain a very thin sheet of fresh pasta. We cut the pasta in equal rectangular forms. Ravioli usually have square dimensions from 4 to 8 cm. What you see at the photos, are about 5 cm X 5 cm. Pasta machines usually produce layers of 15 cm width, so you can prepare a long rectangular layer and then cut it in 3, lengthwise.
We arrange the half of long sheets of pasta and we brush them with water. Water will help the two sheets of pasta remain attached during the boiling process.
We start adding small “walnuts” of cod cream leaving initially about 1,5 cm from the border and then 5 cm till the next “walnut”. When finished, we cover with one equal sheet of pasta. We start pressing the upper sheet of dough at the points WITHOUT cod cream beneath, in order to attach the two sheets of pasta. This point is crucial, so we must press quite intensively.
With a wavy edge pasta cutter, we cut the raviolis. We leave them aside for about 15 minutes.
In a cold skillet we add some olive oil and the garlic cloves. We bring to heat till the garlic starts to turn gold. We discard the solid parts of garlic. We raise the temperature and we add the tomatoes purée and the raisins. We salt and pepper them.
Meanwhile we bring to boil two litres of salted water and we boil the ravioli for about 2 to 3 minutes. We carry them in the skillet with the tomato sauce trying to toss them well with it.
We put the ravioli on plates, garnishing with the pine nuts and the finely chopped fresh parsley and we serve.
