Pansotti: the recipe for stuffed pasta typical of Ligurian cuisine

THE pansotti, Where pansoti, are stuffed pasta typical of Ligurian cuisine, a first course tasty and enveloping Sunday. It is a recipe belonging to the poor tradition, which owes its name to the characteristic shape of pansoti: pansa in Genoese dialect, it means “belly”; swollen and beautiful cicciotelli, plump in fact, they look like ravioli, but have larger dimensions.

They are prepared with a dough of fresh eggs and then stuffed with a filling made from prebuggiùn, the famous mixture of mixed wild herbs, And prescinsoeua, a fresh Ligurian cheese. Hard to find outside regional borders, these typical ingredients are replaced for convenience by spinach, chard, borage and endive; cheese, on the other hand, with the ricotta cheese sheep or cow, according to personal taste.

The important thing is that they come from thin, therefore without meat, an essential characteristic that distinguishes them from ravioli and tortellini. Once boiled, the Ligurian pansotti are strictly seasoned with a walnut sauce creamy and delicate, which will enhance all the flavor of the filling. Fragrant, thanks to the presence of aromatic herbs, and delicious, they are among the most representative dishes of Ligurian cuisine, a must not to be missed.

The thickness of the pansotti pasta should be very fine: once cooked, in fact, you will have to glimpse the intense green of the filling through the leaf. You can also season your fresh pasta with a tomato sauce or a butter, parmesan and fresh marjoram sauce.

Find out how to prepare them by following our recipe step by step.

How to prepare pansotti

For the pasta: pour the flour on the pastry board and form a fountain. Add the eggs, salt and white wine in the center (1).

Start working the dough by slowly incorporating the flour around it (2).

Knead the dough for a few minutes until a soft and homogeneous dough is obtained (3); wrap it in cling film and let it sit for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, wash the spinach or chard, transfer them to a large saucepan (4) and dry them without adding water. Salt them lightly.

After about 15 minutes, the vegetables will be cooked and the water they have released evaporates (5).

Transfer them to a cutting board and finely chop them with a knife (6).

When hot, collect the vegetables in a large bowl with the ricotta, eggs and grated Parmesan; salt and season with a pinch of nutmeg (7).

Mix well with a fork to combine the ingredients (8). Set aside.

Cut the dough into pieces and pass them through the pasta machine to obtain very thin rectangular sheets (9).

Obtain squares with a side of about 8 cm (10).

Distribute a small amount of stuffing in the center of each square (11).

Brush the edges of the squares with water (12).

Join the ends to form triangles (13).

Fold back the two points of the triangle, to form balls similar to tortelli (14). Continue until you have finished the ingredients and arrange all the pansotti on a floured baking sheet.

Bring a large quantity of lightly salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, prepare the walnut sauce. Put the breadcrumbs soaked in milk, nuts (15), salt and garlic in the blender.

Add the Parmesan and the oil (16).

Mix everything until you obtain a creamy sauce but not too liquid (17).

Boil the pansotti and meanwhile dilute the sauce in a large saucepan, adding a few tablespoons of the cooking water (18).

Drain the pansotti directly in the pan (19).

Gently throw them into the walnut sauce (20).

Serve the pansotti immediately, garnishing the dish with Parmesan, crushed walnuts and freshly ground pepper (21).

storage

Pansotti will keep for 2 days in the refrigerator. They can be frozen, raw, for 1-2 months.