Well, these were meant to be culurgiones, a typical Sardinian filled pasta. I was obsessed with how pretty they looked when I first saw them and really wanted to learn. Few YouTubes watching Italian nonnas later, this was my sad attempt. It turned out looking more like Asian dumplings than culurgiones, those nonnas were too fast and efficient and I didn't seem to pick up anything at all! My terrible record of not following recipe also continued. The traditional culurgiones filling consists mainly of potato, pecorino, mint and garlic on a bed of tomato sauce. I couldn't find pecorino and not a big fan of mint so have replaced it with gruyere and lemon thyme. Lemon zest was also added as I wanted to pair the pasta with a richer style sauce using porcini cream. It's probably no longer culurgiones but the flavours were amazing. The sauce was rich and earthy, followed by a bite of the al dente pasta and then it all get mellowed down with the light cheesy potato filling flavoured with lemon zest and fresh lemon thyme. Maybe I'll just create a new type of pasta myself.
Difficulty: Medium
Time: 1.5 hours
Serves: 2
Ingredients
Filling
- 250g floury potato
- 40g gruyere grated
- 1 tbsp lemon zest
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon thyme
- 1 pinch nutmeg
- 1 garlic clive minced
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil
- salt
- pepper
Pasta
- 100g semolina flour
- 1 egg
- 4g squid ink
- pinch of salt
Porcini Cream Sauce
- 10g prosciutto fat*
- 15g dried porcini rehydrated, soaking liquid reserved
- 1/4 cup dried white wine
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 150ml double cream
- salt
- pepper
Baby King Mushroom
- 1 cup baby king mushrooms
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- salt
- pepper
Garnish
- red veined leaves
* I had some prosciutto end sitting around so have sliced the fatty part to add an extra layer of flavour to the sauce.
Method
1. Boil the potato(s) in its skin in hot water for over 30 minutes until it's fully softened and cooked through.
2. Make the pasta dough by mixing semolina with the egg. Divide it up into 2 portions. Add the squid ink into to one of the mixture. Knead each of the dough until it's well formed. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest.
3. Remove the potato skin and mash the potato with a potato ricer into a mixing bowl. Add gruyere, lemon zest, fresh lemon thyme, nutmeg, minced garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. Mix well and set aside.
4. Make the porcini cream sauce by panfrying the prosciutto fat in some oil, add the rehydrated porcini with liquid squeed out, fry until fragrant before adding the white wine. Let it reduce to approximately 2 tbsp of liquid. Add the chicken stock and bring to boil. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.
5. Roll out the pasta dough using half normal and half squid ink dough so you have a sheet of pasta made with 2 colours. Using a 7cm circular cutter to cut it into shape.
6. Place a teaspoon of the potato filling into the middle of the wrapper and fold into culurgiones until finished.
7. Finish the sauce by turning up the heat and reduce to approximaltey 1 cup of liquid. Stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper.
8. Heat up butter and oil in cast iron pan. Add the baby king mushrooms, salt and pepper and fry until golden. Take it out and set aside.
9. Bring a pot of hot water with some salt to boil, cook the culurgiones in batches for 5 minutes.
10. Assemble by placing some porcini cream sauce in the middle of the plate, place on 5 culurgiones, garnish with baby king mushrooms and red veined sorrel leaves.
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