Tortellini and Homemade Filling

For Easter, Daniele got this great idea to make homemade tortellini, which is traditional from his area on holidays such as Easter and Christmas. As much as I tried to convince him not to do it, he would not hear of it and decided to give it a shot. Although we did have one success at making pasta with our pasta maker, I thought it best to try something a bit easier given our horrific failure at making homemade ravioli. But, to my dismay, Daniele prepared for Easter by making tortellini filling the day before and noodles Easter morning.

I should not have doubted him because although we were not successful before, he now has the pasta maker mastered. The tortellini were wonderful and I cannot wait for more. Unfortunately, it will be very difficult for you readers out there to replicate this recipe without a pasta maker, but if you have one or could get your hands on one, you should definitely try this!

Homemade (and Traditional) Tortellini Filling

100 g pork loin cooked in butter
100 g mortadella (bologna)
100 g prosciutto
150 g Parmesan cheese
2 eggs
nutmeg

Begin by cooking your pork loin in a pan on the stove. When cooked, put all meats in a food processor and process until one consistency. Put meats in a bowl and add Parmesan cheese, eggs, and nutmeg. This is your wonderfully tasting filling!

For the pasta noodles, you can use the same recipe as listed on the ravioli page, the noodles will just need to be in a different shape.  For this quantity of filling, we used 3 eggs to prepare our pasta, but to be honest, we had lots of extra filling and could have made much more noodles. (I wish we had!)

When preparing your noodles, make sure to prepare one thin sheet of noodles at a time and keep the rest of your dough in a ball in a covered bowl to ensure it doesn't dry out. When you have one sheet ready, cut into small squares, place a small ball of filling in each center, fold in a triangle, and then bring the two ends of the triangle together to get the tortellini shape.

Finally, since you have now prepared a traditional tortellini dish you must eat it in the traditional way: prepare some chicken broth and cook your tortellini in the boiling chicken broth for 3-5 minutes. Top with grated Parmesan cheese. Wonderful. Can't wait to make this one again.

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