italian filled pasta

Ravioli orginated as a way to use chopped-up leftovers to feed workers quickly. The earliest form of raviolo was a kind of miniature pie that was boiled instead of baked, but it has since evolved into the jewel of Italian cooking. Over the centuries, it has grown more refined with the pasta being stretched so thinly that it becomes translutians, letting you glimpse the colours inside.

Regional variations on ravioli (the generic name i use for all parts of filled pasta parcels) have since multiplied all over Italy, but it is in the northwest , particulary Liguria and Pidemont, that they have reached their peak – made in dazzling variety for all sorts of spesial occations.

as a child i remember that whenever there was an birthday in our family, my mother would say «Ti faccio i ravioli» (i will make ravioli for you) She’d chop the ingredients for the filling, put on the ragu for the sauce sprinkle the board with flour and start rolling out the two layers of pasta dough. We always knew that these parcels would be much better than any presset, because she was making something with her own hands for us.