Marlane Miriello : Two Barley Cakes: Bruna's Handmade Ravioli

One afternoon recently in Radicondoli, I arrived at Bruna’s home for a handmade ravioli making lesson. Bruna is the chef at Bar Nazionale, where her fresh pasta is served daily. She begins each morning at 5:30 making pasta by hand using ten eggs. On the day of my lesson, we used four eggs and I came home with enough ravioli to feed six people plus two servings of pappardelle (flat wide noodles). Later, with the help of Irma, I boiled the ravioli which we served with Irma’s mouth watering ragu, as you will see in the photos below.

Here is the pasta making process Bruna demonstrated in her kitchen:

Bruna began with 400 grams of 00 grade flour and about 100 grams of semolina and a pinch of salt. She mixed them in a bowl, made a crater in the center and broke four farm fresh eggs into the middle She started stirring with a fork, taking in more and more flour, then dug in with her hands and kept combining the eggs and flour until she had the right, elastic, consistency. Lots of flour was left over (maybe a whole cup). She turned the dough out onto the table to rest 10 minutes which allows it to become smooth and elastic.

handmade pasta step one

While waiting for the dough to rest, she mixed one pound of cooked spinach with 300 grams fresh whole sheep’s milk ricotta cheese from the local organic pecorino cheese farm, Podere Paugnano. A few gratings of nutmeg and some salt were the only additions.

ravioli filling

She then began kneading the pasta with her hands (no photos of this) and worked it for maybe five-ten minutes until elastic and “smooth as a woman’s breast.” Then she began working it with the rolling pin. Oh, my!

handmade pasta step two

She rotated the rolling action around and around, her hands becoming one with the rolling ‘pin’ which was really a thick dowel rod maybe 2-3” thick by 3’ long. In Radicondoli, the word for this tool is a ‘macchenaio’ and the word for handmade pasta is ‘maccheroni.’ Only in Radicondoli of course!

handmade pasta step three

More rolling action. It was like a moving meditation.

handmade pasta step three

The sheet grew and grew in width as she worked. At this point she had been rolling the dough for perhaps twenty minutes.

handmade pasta step three

Note how she rolled the dough around the pin then rolled it out—it was more like a parchment than a dough, very elastic, not sticking to itself.

handmade pasta step three

She said it’s not hard to learn. The first few times you make mistakes and it’s a mess, but soon it becomes easy and it’s good every time. She’s been making this stuff for sixty years, every single day—well, I’m sorry but I don’t think her skill level happens overnight! It’s finished “when you can read through it.”

Then she placed heaping spoons of the ricotta/spinach filling (roughly 2 tsps each)) in a row an inch apart across one end of the rolled out pasta dough. She turned the edge over across the little mounds of filling, ran a ravioli cutter along the length of the row to create a closed seam, then cut between each one with the cutter. Then she closed each and every ravioli with a fork (no water, no egg white for “glue.”

handmade ravioli

When the filling was all gone, she rolled up the remaining pasta and sliced it into 3/4” wide noodles for pappardelle.

handmade pappardelle

She sprinkled a bit of semolina onto a metal platter and placed the ravioli in a single layer over it; then she placed a paper towel over the bottom layer and added more. Finally she heaped the pappardelle over the ravioli.

handmade ravioli