Guinea Fowl Tortelli

For Pasta:

• 21 oz Italian flour
• 14 oz Semolina flour
• 11 oz egg yolks
• 3 eggs

*use a kitchen scale for weighing ingredients
For Filling:

• 1 deboned Guinea fowl*
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 medium carrot
• 1 small onion
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Sage leaves to taste
• Hot water
• 7 oz ricotta cheese

*If you can’t find Guinea fowl, you can replace it with about 2lbs of chicken.

For Butter Mousse:

• 7 oz butter
• 5 oz vegetable broth
• Thyme to taste
• Salt to taste
• 0.07 oz ProEspuma (thickener)

For Wine Reduction:

• 17 fl oz Brolio Chianti Classico DOCG
• 1 shallot
• Sage to taste
• Garlic to taste
• Guinea fowl cooking liquid

For Onion Puree: 

• 2 small onions

Pasta:Combine all ingredients in the mixer using the hood attachment to knead until dough is smooth. Cover tightly in plastic wrap and let dough rest for at least 30 minutes at room temperature.

Filling: Wash and cube the vegetables and brown them in a saucepan. Add the Guinea fowl and spices/herbs, cover with water just until everything is submerged and cook for about 30 minutes. Once cooked, strain and reserve the liquid. In a food processor, grind and then carefully mix together the solids with the ricotta. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Place filling in pastry bag.

Assembling the Tortelli:

1. Roll out your pasta dough. You will likely need to work in batches. Every pasta machine is different, do not roll it out to the absolute thinnest setting but roll it out to the “almost thinnest” setting. Make sure the surface you’re working on is lightly coated in bench flour. You don’t want to make perfect tortelli and then have them stick to the table and rip.
2. When you have a sheet of thin, rolled out dough in front of you, use the pastry bag to dollop the filling. The dollops should be equivalent to about 1 tablespoon of filling. The dollops should be spread about 1 inch apart. And most importantly of all, do not put the dollop in the exact center of the dough. Looking at the dough, it will be a rectangle that is very long and about 6 inches in width – your dollop should be near the bottom of the dough, when considering the dough width-wise. The top half of the dough should be empty.
3. Fold the top half of the dough over the dollops, covering the bottom half of the dough. Cup your hands around the filling to press the dough together and squeeze out any pockets of air. Use a pasta cutter to cut a rectangular shape around each dollop of filling (there will be some dough scraps, discard them). You should now have something that looks like a ravioli. To form the tortelli, you will keep three sides of the “ravioli” untouched. The fourth side, you will create a U shape by pressing inward with your index finger. Next, take the two corners at the top of the U shape, and bring them together, pinching them together so that the dough fuses tight. You should have something that looks like a tortelli. You can place the tortelli on a parchment-lined sheet tray and freeze them (after one day in the freezer you can transfer them from the sheet try to a plastic bag). Or, cook them immediately.

Butter Mousse: Melt the butter in a small saucepan along with the thyme. Transfer the butter to the food processor, add the broth, the thickener and salt to taste; blend. Transfer this mixture to your whipping siphon.

Wine Reduction:Place all the ingredients in a small saucepan and gently boil until reduced to 1/3 the original; blend until smooth.

Onion Puree: Preheat oven to 350°F. Cube two small onions and bake until softened, about 2 minutes. Once cool, blend into a fine puree.

To Serve:Bring abundant salted water to a boil; add the tortelli and boil for 4 minutes. Serve each portion of tortelli over the wine reduction, top with the butter mousse and some onion puree.