In the final week of the Leiths Confident Cooking Course, we tackled homemade pasta and amaretti chocolate truffles
Tortellini of ricotta, lemon, parmesan and sage butter
I’ve wanted to make homemade pasta for years, but I don’t have a pasta maker and I’ve not felt confident I could roll out the pasta by hand. Or perhaps, I’ve just been lazy. In any case, I was pleased it would feature on the course.
I found making pasta really fun. We really needed to work in pairs to feed the pasta through the machine, though I think that’s just a matter of practice. Then I had to work really quickly to make the tortellini before the pasta dried out. I found it helped to have a damp tea towel to put over the bits I wasn’t using.
I left the lower half of pasta free and then on the top half, placed mounds of filling at intervals in a row and brushed with water on either side. I folded the unused portion over and then cut semi-circles around the filling using a sharp cookie cutter with scalloped edges. I pressed around the edges to ensure it closed and remove the air. I now had ravioli, and to make tortellini, I simply joined the corners together.
The filling was buffalo ricotta, lemon juice and zest, pecorino and parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Absolutely delicious!
The pasta should be cooked immediately or frozen and then cooked from frozen. It needs to be cooked in boiling, salted water but only for a few minutes since the pasta is fresh not dried. The recipe suggested serving it with sage butter but I opted for truffle oil and mushrooms.
I’m not sure what I did wrong but my pasta was a bit thick and chewy. I’d like to give it another go though.
Amaretti truffles
The height of summer is not the best time to attempt truffles and it was quite a warm night as well. However, we made do, taking care not to overwork the chocolate and refrigerating everything whenever not in use. If it gets too warm, the chocolate can separate.
We brought cream to the boil, then poured over pieces of dark chocolate in a bowl and stirred to combine. Then we placed the bowl over – but not in – a saucepan half filled with water to melt the chocolate. Then we stirred in butter, golden syrup (or glucose) and Amaretto, and refrigerated.
After about 10 minutes, we used an electric whisk to beat the mixture until it suddenly lightened in colour. Back in the fridge it went for another 10 minutes.
We lined a baking sheet with baking parchment – it’s a silicon-coated sheet, not paper, which would stick. Then we used a piping bag (in our case we made them by fashioning cones out of baking parchment, which actually worked very well) to pipe lines of chocolate onto the paper, like thin logs.
We sliced the chocolate to get cylinders of truffle. I stuck my knife in the freezer for a few minutes beforehand. Each truffle we dipped in our choice of cocoa, crushed Amaretti biscuits or crushed almonds. If it had been cooler, we could have rolled the chocolate to make them round, but it seemed sensible to leave them as logs to deal with the heat.
The truffles were amazing, though I had to give most of them away as the recipe made such a vast quantity. I think this would be a nice thing to do for Christmas presents – in the northern hemisphere it’s a better time of year to make truffles too.
I found it very challenging to make my own pasta. Didn’t turn out like Martha Stewarts, but hey, that’s why I buy it in the store. Thanks for sharing your experience.