Homemade Rotolone

With Marta Manceau

Marta Manceau is Italian, lives in France and has been cooking many traditional Italian recipes all of her life. This is one of the special occasion dishes, a classic handmade pasta dish from Reggio Emilia, and is said by Marta to have been a favorite of Pavarotti. It is a long roll of pasta filled with spinach and ricotta cheese, sliced, and then baked with butter and sage. This pasta's short list of ingredients is much more delicious and complex than the sum of its parts. She re-teaches us one of the basics of Italian cooking: that the simplest, shortest list of ingredients can produce a masterpiece.

Ingredients

For the pasta:
2 cups flour
2 eggs
Pinch salt

For the filling:
1 pound spinach (frozen, chopped) or fresh if available
2 tablespoons of butter
1/2 pound (approximately) ricotta cheese, whole milk
1/2 cup Parmigiano cheese, grated
2 eggs
Salt and pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

To pour over the rotolone at baking time:
3/4 stick butter
10-12 sage leaves
Pepper
Parmigiano cheese

Instructions

1. Put flour and salt in a food processor fitted with a dough blade. Pulse slightly, then add eggs and pulse more. If dough does not begin to roll into a ball after some pulsing, fill half an eggshell with water, add that, and pulse again. Repeat if the dough is still too dry.
2. Once it rolls into a ball, remove from processor and set on board. Pinch the top into a small rosette, and let rest for at least twenty minutes.
3. In the meantime, put the spinach, slightly defrosted, into a saute pan with two tablespoons of butter, and a pinch of salt. Sautee at medium heat until the spinach is hot, the butter melted through it. Then let cool completely.
4. While the spinach mixture is cooling, roll the pasta into one large rectangle, approximately twelve inches by eighteen inches. Ideally, Marta says one should use a pasta rolling pin for this, but a rolling pin with handles will work.
5. When the spinach has completely cooled, add the eggs and ricotta, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Combine all well, and then spread out upon the sheet of pasta, leaving a 3/4 inch border empty.
6. Roll the pasta into a fat log starting from the short end. Pinch the ends closed, and then, press closed tighter with the tines of a fork. Press fork tines all across the last edge of pasta to seal even more. Plop the entire 12-inch long roll down upon a sheet of cheese cloth, and wrap it up, tying the ends with twine.
7. Set the roll into salted, boiling water, submerged, and cook for 35 to 40 minutes.
8. The pasta will be cooked through even at the center at this point. Let cool slightly, and then unwrap from cheese cloth.
9. Melt butter and sage and cook just until the butter is infused with leaves' aroma. Pour half of this into a ceramic baking dish, and spread around with the back of a spoon.
10. Slice Rotolone into rounds, 1/2 inch thick. Lay rounds, slightly overlapping, in the dish, making sure each piece has contact with the melted butter on the bottom. Drizzle remaining butter and sage leaves over the top, and sprinke grated Parmigiana cheese over all.
11. Broil until the dish is lightly browned and beautiful.

Recipe courtesy of Marta Manceau, 2010.

From Food for Thought column by Heather Atwood;
One day in January, Marta Manceau arrived at my house bearing the ingredients for rotolone, a classic handmade pasta dish from Reggio Emilia. One long roll of pasta filled with spinach and ricotta cheese, sliced, and then baked with butter and sage, this pasta's short list of ingredients is much more delicious and complex than the sum of its parts. Marta arrived prepared to make this specialty in a video for us, because her charms and enthusiasm for life and food made me believe everyone should know Marta, if not how to cook like she does.
Marta has the spirit of a 20-year-old, with great style coded into her Italian DNA. At 60-something years old, she wears her henna-colored hair in a straight cut to her shoulders. Marta lives in Umbria now and when she speaks of dishes from her native Reggio Emilia her whole face brightens. And how could it not, when home to Marta means the cities of Parma and Modena, whose cheese, prosciutto and balsamic vinegar are some of the best foods in the world, period? Last August Marta and her family came over with a plate of fried zucchini blossoms, which we ate with my husband's freshly caught bluefish and some cold Orvieto, a meal that married Cape Ann to Umbria.
In our video, Marta takes charge of my kitchen in her blithely effervescent way, and teaches me that I have the wrong rolling pin for pasta, but it will work anyway, and she re-teaches me one of the basics of Italian cooking: that the simplest, shortest list of ingredients can produce a masterpiece. She even teaches me the secret to finding a husband, should one be looking.