Beetroot Ravioli / Casunziei

It's very delicious, it's beautiful (though not as brilliant as theirs is - see photo, mine left, theirs right), but make sure you start early enough with preparations!

I was a bit worried that if I'd follow the instructions and peel and cut the beetroot into cubes, the beetroot would bleed and loose all colour - but then again, cooking them whole would mean at least an hour cooking time, and given the time and the temperatures, I wasn't too keen on that. Turns out I shouldn't have bothered, I had to cook them for 50 minutes anyway to get them reasonably soft. I mashed them with a potato masher, and puréed them with a hand blender because they wouldn't mash well enough.

We also wondered about the pasta dough, as no explanation is given why he uses a different recipe for this dish and not for any of the others. We had the idea that it tore easily, but once we rolled out the dough that wasn't a problem.

We used a circle shape with a 7cm diameter as we thought 5cm would be far too small to actually add any filling. 7cm was just big enough for 1 teaspoon of filling (as opposed to 2 tsp), but once we cooked the pasta we had the idea that the ravioli became larger and flatter, and that we could have added more filling. I guess one way to achieve this would be to make a 5cm base and a 6 or 7cm top, as the top needs to be slightly larger to cover everything.

We also had a small problem with the ravioli sticking to the baking parchment after the resting period. I'm not sure using a dish cloth as instructed would have entirely prevented this, I would recommend adding some extra flour and turning them halfway during the resting period (the top layer will dry out slightly, while the bottom layer will not, and will therefore stick...). This made two of our 16 ravioli tear (we made only half the recipe today, with the rest of the filling and the dough waiting in the fridge for Monday - my guess is that we'll have too much filling left over)

Regarding the flavours, I loved the butter with the poppy seed. I could definitely see me using this for cooked or roasted vegetables too, eg. cauliflower. Be careful with the nutmeg, it will be stronger in the ravioli than you'll expect it to be.

This is definitely something you would serve guests as an appetizer during a fancy meal. In this case, the resting period is actually in your favour as it gives you time for other dishes or entertaining. I wouldn't prepare it for the two of us again, it's just too much work.