Tortellini Tutorial

Say that three times fast! I love alliterations. 🙂

Ok, so, I am sooo excited to share my new favorite recipe with you! Actually, it’s several recipes – I have a Tortellini Tutorial, The Four Cheese filling recipe I made up myself (whoo-hoo!), and how I served the scrumptious tortellini the other night…hold on to you hats!

We start with the pasta. Who doesn’t love pasta? I do! But I have not enjoyed it in my diet regularly for over 5 years – simply because store bought pasta is over processed and hard for my body to digest. Brown rice pasta has been a good replacement, but it is expensive. I have longed for the yummy and economical option of our favorite pasta dishes but had not found a healthful solution – until now.

Nourishing Gourmet posted a recipe for soaked pasta dough, and that’s how I got started. Of course, I wasn’t just gonna make plain noodles – I found this tutorial, and decided to fill the pasta and make tortellini.

Then I found that tortelloni is even easier than tortellini…’cause you cut it in squares, instead of circles (oh, but it was fun to use my new, thrifted biscuit cutter!) However you shape them, next you fill them with…

Four Cheese Filling

this should make enough to fill half of your soaked pasta – the other half you can cut into fettucini like I did…

1/2 c. Cheddar cheese

1/3 c. cream cheese

1/3 c. Parmesan

1 c. Mozzarella

1/4 tsp. corrinander

1 1/2 tsp. oregano

1/2 tsp. each salt and pepper

1 tsp. garlic granules

1 egg

Mix thoroughly. put a small teaspoon in the center of each piece of dough. Don’t try to put too much filling in – it’ll stress your pasta and pop out and melt into the boiling water. (voice of experience!)

Even Jesse got into the fun.

He really had no idea what he was doing, but he saw mamma wrap it around her finger, so here he is with his dough lump around his thumb…

Ta-Da! Tortelloni!

Of course, you can cut your pasta into whatever shape you want and dry it over night to preserve it for pasta another time. But if you fill it like I did, you have to cook it right away, right? Plop, into the boiling water it goes…

The glory of fresh pasta – it’s done in less than 10 minutes.

Then you get to eat it! The first time I made tortelloni, I served it with red sauce and Parmesan cheese. The second time I went all out and made Tortelloni Carbanara. Sort of. It was a cross between Tortellini Alfredo with Peas and Bacon, and a simpler Carbonara sauce. Plus I added mushrooms and onions when I sauteed the bacon. OK, I have to stop now ’cause I’m drooling on the key board. Can you see why we now have a pasta night weekly? Oh, yum….try it yourself and let me know how it goes!