7.1.09

my actual birthday dinner.

















After our amplifier hobocamp bonfire Tuesday night, we had a lovely commitmentless day (the last for a while) on Wednesday which revolved around coffee in bed and much general debrief. Oh, and planning a markedly less healthy dinner than the white bean and kale soup from Monday.

The much-more-explicit-than-usual recipe given below should be taken as an indicator of this dish's goodness. As I mention in the Comments for this post, Madeira was not my first choice for the boozy element in this cream sauce, but it's all we had, and it was delicious. But I do wonder if a pear brandy would've been overkill or the perfect ingredient.

















Also, these lovely plates are one of my birthday presents, and yes, they are pear-colored, so OK, they either are or maybe are not the awesomest choice for this particular meal from a blogging perspective, but shit man, since when was eating about blogging? Answer me that.

OK, sometimes it is.

















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pear, gorgonzola and walnut ravioli with madeira cream and black pepper.


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2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 large eggs

125gr ricotta
2 tbsp gorgonzola
1 Comice pear, peeled and diced
8 walnuts, toasted and finely chopped
75gr parmigiano-reggiano, finely grated

2 tbsp butter
2 shallots, minced
1/2 Comice pear, peeled and diced
1/3 cup Madeira
1/2 cup cream
a pinch of sea salt

freshly ground black pepper
grated parmigiano-reggiano

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Make pasta dough.

To make the filling: mash the gorgonzola into the ricotta until everything is fully integrated. Mash the pear into the cheese mixture until combined, then add walnuts and parmesan, stirring to combine. You may want to resist the temptation to do this in a food processor: the pureed pear will make your filling almost too wet to use.

Fill the pasta.

Make the sauce: melt the butter in a saucepan and add the pear and shallots, turn to low and simmer for 10-15 minutes until pear and shallot are nicely browned, but not blackened or burnt. Your pear may disintegrate if too ripe, that's probably fine. Add Madeira and bring to a boil, let boil for 2 to 3 minutes. Add cream and simmer for 5 minutes until thickened. Salt to taste.

Cook pasta for 4 minutes, plate with sauce, a couple tablespoons of grated Parmesan and a few healthy grinds of black pepper.

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To inject the tiniest bit of color and health into this meal there was this:

















Oh, and because it seemed silly not to, we also made some squash ravioli with a browned version of this:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

did it actually taste good? it would seem so, might be up for trying this one...

MEM said...

Hey there Anonymous...

Yes, yes it did, we licked the plates.

I'm not sure Madeira is the perfect choice here, but it was the only thing remotely appropriate that we had in the house. Marsala probably would even have been a little better...

Also, the black pepper was necessary to keep this from turning into a dessert...but you could also get away with scattering chopped arugula on top of this, or even putting it in the filling I guess for another peppery note.