Great Ripieno of spinach with sauce of mussels and mushrooms

If you read to me regularly you will already know my great passion for pasta and Italian cuisine. Not only do I try to adapt it to the foods in my fridge, but I go a step further by mixing ingredients not common in classic pasta recipes. So in this blog you can find everything from spaghetti with pate and vegetables to a vegetable lasagna with pepper béchamel . And that’s because I don’t always have the exact ingredients for this or that recipe and I end up cooking a different recipe although the base is always pasta.

Again I present a recipe for fresh pasta from Giovanni Rana, just like the previous one from  Tagliatelle rosso with scallops , which is very good and I recommend you. There is a wide variety of fresh pasta, normal or stuffed, and although it is not as good as if you prepare it yourself at home, it helps you cook a dish that the whole family likes.

This dish has 2 types of stuffed pasta, one of eggplant and mozzarella and another of spinach, pine nuts and raisins. I have mixed two containers that I thought could combine well because I had 4 guests to eat and with a single tray it did not reach me. What a great discovery! two fillings that combine perfectly with the sauce that I explain below. I hope that Raul and Carmen leave me their comment, I think they left more than satisfied to eat at home the other day. Thank you both for bringing me those eggs from home, those onions with so much flavor, kiwis, apples, giant garlic, potatoes … the Galician garden almost complete. It’s nice to have these guests … hehe

Preparation of the sauce of mussels and mushrooms

This sauce is very common in the Galician coastal areas, although I have not seen it with mushrooms. It has 7 ingredients that make it bread and dipping: onion, garlic, tomato, pepper, mussels, mushrooms and a good white. I added a little ground cayenne to give it that spicy touch that I like so much in pasta. The combination of flavor with the 2 pasta fillings that I present to you complement each other very well. And of course, this sauce can be used in many recipes.

1. We wash the mussels very well in cold water and remove all the impurities that come in the bag. We heat a glass of water in a saucepan and when it starts to boil add a bay leaf and then the mussels. We leave it cooking 3 minutillos and as soon as they are all open we remove them with a slotted spoon. Let cool and reserve on a plate. We are not going to throw the cooking water, strain it and leave it in a glass.
2. We remove the mussels helped by a good knife, dragging all the meat until the interior is clean. We clean the strands and the broken shells that are stuck to the mussel well. We reserve them on a plate.
3. We wash the mushrooms well and cut into strips. We reserve.
4. Chop the onions, garlic cloves and bell pepper into very small pieces. Add oil to the pan and sauté the garlic cloves first for half a minute, then the onion and finally the green pepper all over low heat 10 min until it is poached, it should not be crisp. We taste and season. Add the mussels and mushrooms into strips.
5. We pour 1/2 glass of white wine, half a glass of the mussel water, the peeled tomato and the ground cayenne. Let it reduce for approximately 15 minutes over medium heat while stirring with a wooden spoon and remove from the heat.
6. We rectify salt and pepper if needed and to reduce the juice a little, 2 more minutes. We remove everything gently. Once we have the sauce we reserve and then combine it with the pasta.

Preparation of the Great Ripieno

I present you some easy steps so that the pasta is perfect for you. It is not that it is especially difficult but everything has its little tricks, ” simple … ma non troppo” that the Italians would say (Easy, but not entirely). Let’s go to the topic.

1. We must have the sauce prepared before the pasta touches the water. The sauce of mushrooms and mussels must wait for the big ripieno and not the other way around.
2. In a saucepan, heat one liter of water for every 100 g of fresh pasta. It is the recommended measure per person except if we are passionate about pasta at home. These proportions, which are normally indicated on the packaging, help the paste not stick together. And always try to use a large casserole, the largest in your kitchen. If you cook pasta many times it will be very useful to buy a casserole for those occasions, a good investment.
3. When it begins to boil in spurts we add 1 generous handful of salt, about 2 level tablespoons for every 500 grams of pasta. Then we add the pasta, always all together. We remove with a wooden spoon so that the large grains do not stick and are loose.
4. On the back of the package of pasta comes the cooking time, we must be guided by these instructions because for each type it is different, in this case it is 5 minutes. Once the time has elapsed, we drain it immediately.
5. We spray them with a little olive oil.

Presentation

1. Add the freshly made ravioli to the sauce and mix everything with a spoon so that the flavors are well combined.
2. We decorate each plate with some mint leaves, some pine nuts, grated cheese and serve them freshly made. Remember that with this recipe a good glass of pearls goes from the same wine with which we have cooked the sauce. You will tell me …