Slow-Roasted Pork-filled Tortelloni Recipe
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80 minutes prep time
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205 minutes cook time
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Intermediate
This is delicious a pasta of real substance from Antico restaurant in London. The pork belly and sage butter make a great partnership, creating wonderfully rich, Italian flavours.
Is there a difference between tortellini and tortelloni?
Tortellini and tortelloni are very similar shapes, but tortelloni are larger. Tortellini are traditionally made with meat fillings, whereas tortelloni are traditionally filled with milder fillings such as ricotta. In reality, you can make each pasta with whatever filling you prefer. Note that Antico's recipe is for tortelloni, not the more common tortellini – the difference being that tortelloni is far larger, with a dramatic pasta dough hood framing the meat parcel.
What goes with tortelloni?
Traditional tortelloni is served with simple dressing of a sage butter sauce, whereas smaller tortellini is often served in a broth.
How to make tortelloni pasta from scratch
This recipe for tortelloni and pork shoulder guides you thorugh each step of making homemade pasta and filling it. The recipe might seem lengthy, but if approached in a methodical fashion then it’s very achievable. Try and make the dough the day before it's needed, and leave three hours to make the pork filling before you intend to make the tortelloni parcels. The beauty of the dish is that it can be made hours before a dinner, and then stored in an air-tight container, then quickly cooked before the meal.
Before starting, have a quick read through head chef Nicholas Schizas’ pasta making tips.For the pasta dough
For the filling
- 15ml oil
- 500g pork shoulder, cut into 1 inch cubes
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 celery stalks, diced
- 3-4 sprigs of thyme
- salt pepper
- 100ml white wine
Sauce
- 60g butter
- 20g fresh sage leaves
Equipment
- Ovenproof pan
- Imperia pasta maker
- Pastry cutter
- Baking paper
- Tin foil
- Food processor
- Piping bag
- Rolling pin
- Spritzer
To Make In advance - Pasta dough
- Put the 00 flour, semolina, egg yolks and egg whites into a mixing bowl, and pulse in a food processor and use your hands to bring it together. Knead gently for just a couple of minutes.
- Wrap the dough in clingfilm and refrigerate overnight – or for at least three hours while you make the tortelloni meat filling.
Filling for pork shoulder tortelloni
- Heat the oil in a saucepan or skillet that is safe to use in the oven. Sear the pieces of pork until the outside is golden brown. Remove the meat from the pan, and reduce the heat.
- Add the onion, celery and carrots to the pan, and cook over a low heat for 15 minutes.
- Add the thyme. Season with the salt and pepper, and then pour the wine over the softened vegetables.
- Return the pork to the pan and try to tuck it under the vegetables.
- Lay a circle of baking parchment on top of the pan, and cover with two sheets of tin foil, scrimped down tightly at the sides. Put it in the oven for 3 hours at 150C until the pork is cooked and falling apart.
- Ladle the cooked meat and vegetables into a food processor, and slowly add the pan juices, until blended to a loose pate-consistency.
- Once the meat has cooled, spoon it into a disposable piping bag. Don’t snip off the end, but put a firm twist in the top, and store it in the fridge until needed.
Making tortelloni pasta
- Take the pasta dough out of the fridge, and bring it to room temperature.
- Dust the worktop with semolina, unless it’s a particularly wet dough, in which case use 00 flour instead.
- Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough into a rectangle-shape, roughly 1cm thick so it will fit through the pasta machine.
- Set the Imperia pasta machine to the widest setting, and turn the handle to feed the dough through it. Move down a setting notch by notch, rolling the dough thinner each time, until it has been passed through at the thinnest setting.
- Fold the long sheet of pasta into thirds lengthways, as you would fold a bed sheet. Rotate it so that you are feeding the side with open furls back into the Imperia machine set at the widest setting again, and repeat the process, rolling it thinner notch by notch.
- After folding the pasta back into thirds and repeating the process three times over, use a pastry cutter to divide the finished sheet of pasta into squares. Pass the individual squares through the machine on a 1.5mm setting – they should measure about 4x4cm.
- Snip the end off the piping bag containing the meat filling. Squeeze about one teaspoon of the pork belly onto each pasta square.
- Use a spritzer to spray a mist of water over the pasta squares to lightly dampen the dough. This will help seal the edges. Fold each square in half into a triangular-shaped parcel.
- Pinch both bottom corners between your thumb and finger, and pull them downwards until they meet at the middle. Pinch the two corners together to form a diamond-shape.
Cooking the pork tortelloni pasta
- Bring a pan of water to the boil. Add a pinch of salt, and then cook the pasta in boiling water for 4 minutes.
- Meanwhile, heat the butter in a pan until it’s melted – though not brown.
- Add the sage leaves, and then add 1 ladle of water from the pasta to emulsify the sauce.
- Drain the pasta, and add it to the pan of sage and butter. Serve.
