Recipe & Video Squid Ink Ravioli with mascarpone and shiitake mushrooms (video)

Have you made ravioli before?

  • Heck yeah

    Votes: 5 71.4%

  • No, and they are too much trouble.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, but I want to.

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • Total voters
    7
medtran49 said:
I don't know if quail eggs would work as they are so tiny. You have to cook it long enough to cook the pasta, about 1-1/2 to 2 minutes, and then you cook them another minute or so in the pan sauce, and those tiny quail yolks might get too cooked.
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Bantman egg yolks might be the answer then. Typically a bantam egg is 1/2 the weight of a normal egg so usually comes in between 25-35g without the shell. If a hens egg yolk is too big and quail too small, a (true) bantam egg yolk should be spot on.
 
Hens' eggs aren't too big, they are what is normally used. I think @morning glory might want something more small and delicate, but you have to take cooking time of the other parts into account.
 
medtran49 said:
I don't know if quail eggs would work as they are so tiny. You have to cook it long enough to cook the pasta, about 1-1/2 to 2 minutes, and then you cook them another minute or so in the pan sauce, and those tiny quail yolks might get too cooked.
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Now I think about it you may be right. To soft boil takes about 1 minute 30, I seem to remember. It might just work. I will have to try!
 
medtran49 said:
Hens' eggs aren't too big, they are what is normally used. I think @morning glory might want something more small and delicate, but you have to take cooking time of the other parts into account.
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Yes - hens' eggs are what is normally used in other recipes I've seen. I was sort of thinking of adding more of other fillings and having the delicate little quail's egg nestling in the middle. I'm sure bantam eggs would work too.
 
Fantastic. I've been fascinated by squid ink for its use in pasta dough. Besides the stunning color, I understand that squid ink has a saltiness to it. I see you are also one of the rare people who adds normally salt to the dough (I like doing that so I don't have to depend on the water to do my seasoning for me; I know exactly how every bite of the pasta will taste, sauce or no). I would use 1 teaspoon for 2 1/2 cups of flour, so is this a concession to the saltiness of the ink?
 
The Late Night Gourmet said:
Fantastic. I've been fascinated by squid ink for its use in pasta dough. Besides the stunning color, I understand that squid ink has a saltiness to it. I see you are also one of the rare people who adds normally salt to the dough (I like doing that so I don't have to depend on the water to do my seasoning for me; I know exactly how every bite of the pasta will taste, sauce or no). I would use 1 teaspoon for 2 1/2 cups of flour, so is this a concession to the saltiness of the ink?
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Hello LNG! Sorry, summer ventures took me away for a bit. To answer your question, I find the squid ink is only very subtly salty, but the flavour doesn't persist much once incorporated into the pasta, in my experience. There's a bit of earthiness and some say something resembling a truffle flavour as well, but again, it's all very subtle.

The reason there is less salt added to the pasta is actually because I've instructed people to salt the water, too. A lot of times when I see people making pasta at home and they salt the water, it's a little smidgen of salt that has little effect, and then they also proceed to sprinkle salt on the final product, or use a salty sauce. Since I thought that the butter garlic sauce and the mascarpone filling elements had sufficient salt, I didn't want to instruct people to salt the final product (plus I don't think it would look great with the plating). Why, then, the complexity of two steps, rather than 1 of salting the pasta or the water (you may ask)? There's the assurance of adequate salt in the pasta from adding it to the dough, and there's also something about a bit of brine infused and evaporating on the outside of the ravioli unit that I fancy. I shall have to meditate on whether that is needlessly complex. What's your take?
 
Cinnamonita said:
Why, then, the complexity of two steps, rather than 1 of salting the pasta or the water (you may ask)? There's the assurance of adequate salt in the pasta from adding it to the dough, and there's also something about a bit of brine infused and evaporating on the outside of the ravioli unit that I fancy. I shall have to meditate on whether that is needlessly complex. What's your take?
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Most recipes in Italian cookbooks for home-made pasta don't use salt in the dough. But I have seen recipes that do. I made some home-made pasta recently and didn't add salt to the dough but did add lots of salt to the water. It was fine. But I know the water needs a lot of salt and often people don't add enough.
 
Cinnamonita said:
Why, then, the complexity of two steps, rather than 1 of salting the pasta or the water (you may ask)? There's the assurance of adequate salt in the pasta from adding it to the dough, and there's also something about a bit of brine infused and evaporating on the outside of the ravioli unit that I fancy. I shall have to meditate on whether that is needlessly complex. What's your take?
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I would have said that roughly 95% of pasta recipes don't add salt to the dough, but add it to the water; mine would be among the 5% that add it to the dough and not the water. Yours is the first I've seen that does both; this means, of course, that I have to give this a try. :) If I plan ahead enough, I could even make a third of the batch with the full salt in the dough and none in the water, a third with half the salt and salt in the water, and a third with no salt in the dough and heavy salt in the water.

morning glory said:
But I know the water needs a lot of salt and often people don't add enough.
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Yes! When it comes to salting water for boiling pasta or vegetables, there's a tendency to worry about over-salting. I find these concerns are largely unfounded.

Fortunately, as it often does, Serious Eats has a phenomenal treatise on the subject: How Salty Should Pasta Water Be? The chef who did the study came up with the following:

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The issue here is that there is different density in the salt particles themselves, so saying "add a tablespoon of salt" is not a specific measure. He found that a 1% salinity is what seems to work best. This, of course, assumes that there's no salt in the pasta.
 
The Late Night Gourmet said:
I would have said that roughly 95% of pasta recipes don't add salt to the dough, but add it to the water; mine would be among the 5% that add it to the dough and not the water. Yours is the first I've seen that does both; this means, of course, that I have to give this a try. :) If I plan ahead enough, I could even make a third of the batch with the full salt in the dough and none in the water, a third with half the salt and salt in the water, and a third with no salt in the dough and heavy salt in the water.
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For science! If you end up doing this meticulous set of tasks, I wanna hear all about it!


The Late Night Gourmet said:
Fortunately, as it often does, Serious Eats has a phenomenal treatise on the subject: How Salty Should Pasta Water Be? ...He found that a 1% salinity is what seems to work best. This, of course, assumes that there's no salt in the pasta.
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Well that's really cool to have this resource. Thanks for sharing!
 
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