On beetroots. Purple beetroot ravioli with ricotta, walnuts, and thyme

Growing up, beets in my house were bought rarely, always pre-cooked and sealed in plastic. The only way my dad would eat them was thickly sliced and slathered in mayonnaise, something I still love from time to time.

The first time I was introduced to raw beetroots was at the local farmers’ market, more than 10 years ago. At that time, I was teaching cooking classes for children at the market: we would go from stall to stall, picking what was fresh and seasonal, to assemble all the ingredients afterwards into bruschetta, vegetable spreads or fresh pasta parcels.

One Sunday morning, right on the verge between winter and spring, there was one German guy, chef and owner of a deli shop, who was panfrying in olive oil thin slices of beetroots, previously dredged in flour. He sprinkled the beets with salt and passed me one to try: that was love at first bite and the moment when my relationship with fresh beets changed.

I started to look for fresh beets at the market, choosing those with luscious leaves that I would immediately blanch and sauté with garlic and olive oil.

I owe my appreciation for beetroots to Niki Segnit – one of my favourite food writers, and the author of one of the most inspiring food-related books, The Flavour Thesaurus, a must-have for every passionate home cook and aspiring food writer. She showed me the light: the magic lies in the pairings.

An unlikely sort of vegetable: dense, bluntly sweet, needing two hours’ boiling, with more than a hint of the garden shed in its flavour and a habit of bleeding over everything. […] The secret of beetroot’s success is its strange combination of sweetness and earthiness, which sets off ingredients that are predominantly sour, salty, or both, like goats’ cheese. – Niki Segnit, The Flavour Thesaurus

My favourite recipes with beetroots? I either bake them, wrapped in foil, with olive oil and fresh herbs, and then toss the cubed beetroot, still warm, into a salad, or I make a carpaccio. This is my go-to recipe for the summer, and one of the most appreciated appetizers during cooking classes: it is bright, colourful, unexpected, and you can easily turn this carpaccio into a meal crumbling some goat cheese on top. You see, the magic lies in the pairings.

Purple beetroot ravioli with ricotta, walnuts, and thyme. Where the idea was born

Last year, during some research for the cookbook, I encountered the casunziei from Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the Alps, the cutest fresh pasta parcels stuffed with beets and potatoes, drizzled with poppy seed butter and showered with aged, smoked ricotta.

Today’s stuffed pasta was born from the union of my beetroot carpaccio and casunziei ampezzani. The beetroot, though, goes into the pasta dough, turning it into bright purple silken pasta sheets. The filling is made with chopped toasted walnuts, ricotta, grated pecorino, and fresh thyme for earthiness. Finally, I dressed the ravioli just like I would do with casunziei, with butter, poppy seeds, and aged ricotta. In the newsletter, today I’m also sharing a bonus recipe for a Quattro Formaggi sauce to dress the ravioli.

All about beetroot purée

The recipe calls for 150 grams/5.3 oz of beetroot puree. You can get the purée by blending store-bought pre-cooked beetroots, but if you have time, I do suggest buying fresh beetroots and to bake them. You will get a thicker, more flavourful purée which will give you in return smooth, velvety, purple fresh pasta sheets.

How to cook the beetroots

Choose small firm-to-the-touch beetroots, 2 should be enough (about 200 grams/7 oz total). Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F.

Scrub the beets and place them on a large piece of aluminium foil, then drizzle them with olive oil and sprinkle them with a pinch of salt. Wrap the aluminium foil onto itself, making a parcel, then transfer to the oven. Bake them for about 40 minutes, until you can easily pierce the beets with a knife. The baking time will largely depend on the beet size, so check them every 20 minutes. When the beets start to burn on the bottom, you’ve gone too far!
Carefully unwrap the beets, transfer them to a colander, and let cool completely.

Peel the beets, then collect them in a blender and blend them to a purée.

How to get perfectly smooth purple pasta sheets?

Remember you need a smooth purée to have a silky pasta sheet as if it is too coarse it will get tricky to roll out the dough.

What to do if the purée is not smooth enough? Blend it with the egg, or, even better, with part of the flour you are going to use in the pasta. It will be a bit messy, but this will ensure that the beet purée is perfectly blended with the flour.

Notes on quantities

The following filling ingredients are enough to make about 40 ravioli, the first course for 6 people or a generous main course for 4.

You’ll have more pasta than you need, though: once you’re making such beautiful pasta why limit yourself to making just ravioli. Roll out any remaining pasta dough into paper-thin sheets and cut them into tagliatelle. Dress them with a cheese sauce, with a walnut sauce, or even with a poultry ragù.

Notes on ingredients

Drain the ricotta for a few hours before mixing it with the toasted walnuts: watery ricotta will create a wet filling, that will in turn dampen the pasta sheets.

I showered the beetroot ravioli with aged ricotta. When smoked, it is typical of the Veneto region – where the casunziei are from -, but otherwise, it is very common in the Italian South, especially in Puglia and Sicily. I find it a versatile cheese that you can grate over pasta (I love it with orecchiette and a fresh tomato sauce), mix into a stuffing, or even thinly slice and serve as an appetizer along with jam or chutney.

Should it be difficult to get hold of, use Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano Reggiano, or a mix of both.

Link Love

• In February, in Letters from Tuscany, we celebrated the pantry, and it gave us the chance to cook a Neapolitan classic, pasta alla puttanesca, a Southern-inspired onion strudel, and the Florentine rice fritters, Tommaso’s favourite Carnival treats.
• For the new column Other people’s pantries, a new series of Q&A with a focus on pantries as a privileged way to get into people’s lives, cooking styles, and favourite recipes, I interviewed my friend Vea from Mas del Saro. You can read the interview here.
• You can listen to an interview I did for Untold Italy Podcast here. We talked about my favourite Spring recipes and ingredients in Tuscany.
• Not to remain paralyzed by the horror of what is happening in Ukraine, I joined Alissa Timoshkina and Olia Hercules in their #CookForUkraine project, a UK-based fundraising page for donations to UNICEF Ukraine. You can support the cause by cooking Ukrainian recipes and sharing them on Social Media using the hashtag #CookForUkraine. Read more about it here.
• Finally, Substack released its new Substack iOS app. I have been waiting for this feature since I started reading many newsletters: I wanted an app where I could easily read all my favourite food writers, and now, there it is! The app brings all your Substack subscriptions together in one venue, giving you a focused place to read your favourite writers. Discovery features make it easier to find and fall in love with new writers, and the app brings text, audio, video, and community seamlessly together for the best reading experience on the internet. 

Workshops for Ukraine

How can a recipe actively support the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had to leave their homes and land because of the devastating war in Ukraine?

With The Bluebird Kitchen, Frollemente, Claudiu Frasiloaia, Momacys, To be bread, Mangioquindisono, Healthylittlecravings, and Fancyfactory we created Workshops for Ukraine, a fundraiser in which we offer our time and knowledge to help the Red Cross that in these days is trying to support hundreds of thousands of refugees.

You can decide to donate a free amount or participate in one of the courses we have created for you (they are all in Italian). 

But back to the recipe. How can a recipe have such disruptive power?

In the workshop I’ll be teaching, How to Write a Recipe, we’ll see how recipes are chemical formulas that rely on the perfect balance of ingredients and process, and consequently require precise language and a shared code. On the other hand, though, recipes are also a concentration of culture, traditions, customs, and values, which transmit a world of flavours and tastes, keep it alive and also mark its evolution.

In this two-hour workshop, we’ll look at recipe writing from these two different perspectives. We’ll also talk about the tone of voice, how recipe writing has evolved over time (from Eliza Acton to Julia Child to Nigella Lawson), the difference between writing a recipe for a blog or a cookbook, the conversion from grams to cups, which is not only a matter of numbers but also of different cultural worlds.

Join us, make a donation, or simply share this initiative: every little gesture counts!

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