Casoncelli

Sweet-wrapper parcels with amaretti in the filling, dressed with butter, sage and pancetta.

Pork, Beef, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains beef, parmesan whose rennet the source does not name, pork.

Ingredients

Pasta

• 400 g plain flour and 4 eggs, worked to a dough and rested 30 minutes

Filling

• 250 g braised beef, chopped finely
• 60 g breadcrumbs
• 40 g amaretti biscuits, crushed
• 60 g parmesan, grated
• 1 egg
• the zest of 1 lemon
• 1 clove garlic, grated

To dress

• 100 g butter
• 100 g pancetta, in small cubes
• 12 sage leaves
• 40 g parmesan, to serve

Method

1. Mix the filling. THE AMARETTI ARE NOT A MISTAKE: a little sweetness and bitter almond against braised beef is the point of this filling, and leaving them out gives you an ordinary meat ravioli.
2. Roll the pasta thin and cut rectangles about 6 by 8 cm.
3. Put a finger of filling across the middle, fold the pasta over it lengthways, and press.
4. NOW PINCH BOTH ENDS, so it looks like a wrapped sweet with the middle plump and the ends flat. That shape is the dish's own and it is not a half-moon, a hat or a tube.
5. Boil them 4 minutes in salted water.
6. Meanwhile fry the pancetta in the butter until crisp, then drop the sage leaves in for 30 seconds until they stop sizzling and go translucent.
7. Drain the pasta and turn it through the butter. NO SAUCE BEYOND THAT — no tomato, no cream. The filling is doing enough.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes