Home › Macaroni and Other Pastes › Sweet Ravioli (Ravioli Dolce)
Sweet Ravioli (Ravioli Dolce)
These ravioli can be used also as a dessert by preparing them as follows: Take 1/2 pound of flour 1 tablespoon of butter 2 tablespoons of lard Work this into a paste and roll out thin.
Take one-half pound of curds, add one egg, and the yolk of a second egg, two tablespoons of granulated sugar, a few drops of extract of vanilla. Mix well together and add to the paste as before. Then fry in lard until a golden brown. Serve with powdered sugar.
A fried sweet ravioli in the mold of Sicilian cassatelle, written for a cook who had already read the savory ravioli entry a few pages earlier. Two things in the text need filling in: the dough has no stated liquid, and the filling's "curds" are not cottage cheese as sold today.
- "Add to the paste as before"This points back to the savory ravioli entry earlier in the book, i.e. the usual method: spoon rounds of filling onto the rolled sheet, fold or cover with a second sheet, press the air out, and seal the edges firmly. A poorly sealed seam bursts in the fat and the filling scorches, so press with a fork or crimp with a fluted cutter.
- The dough is short of liquidHalf a pound of flour (about 1 3/4 cups) with 3 tablespoons of fat will not come together on its own. Add just enough cold water to make a firm, workable paste; 4 to 6 tablespoons is a reasonable starting point. An egg with a splash of white wine in place of the water is a variation found in related pastries.
- Curds means fresh ricottaCurds means fresh cheese -- "Curds" here means drained fresh cheese from the dairy: ricotta or a farmer's/pot cheese. Whole-milk ricotta is the closest common substitute. Use 8 oz and drain it in a sieve for an hour or more; supermarket ricotta carries more water than farmhouse curds and will make a slack filling that leaks.
- Roll thin, but not sheer"Thin" here means about 1/16 inch — thin enough to blister and crisp in the fat, thick enough to hold a wet cheese filling.
- Frying fat and temperatureLard at 350–360°F gives the golden color the recipe asks for; hotter and the shell browns before the cheese warms through. Two to three minutes a side, turning once, and drain on a rack rather than paper so the underside stays crisp. Neutral oil works if lard is unwelcome, at some cost in flavor.
- Sugar and vanillaTwo tablespoons of sugar to half a pound of cheese is restrained by modern dessert standards. Taste the filling and go to three or four if you want it sweeter; a grating of lemon zest or a pinch of cinnamon is traditional in the same family of pastries.
- Yield and servingExpect 18 to 24 ravioli of about 2 1/2 inches, serving six. Dust with powdered sugar and eat warm — the ricotta filling firms and the shell softens as they cool, and they do not keep well past the hour.
Fried sweet ravioli belong to a very old Italian pastry family: a short paste sealed around sweetened fresh cheese and dropped into hot fat, known in Sicily as cassatelle and in various regional forms across the south and center of the peninsula. They are Carnival food above all — the eggs, cheese and lard were used up freely — and versions turn up under a variety of local names, some baked rather than fried, some with chocolate or citron worked into the ricotta. Its appearance here as a variant tacked onto the savory ravioli entry reflects the practical logic of the book: the reader has just been taught to roll and seal a filled paste, so the sweet version costs only a paragraph. The reliance on lard for both the dough and the frying is a good period marker, from a time when it was the ordinary Italian kitchen fat and butter was the expensive northern alternative.