This is a tortellini made from scratch with a fresh beet pasta. Filled with wild maitake mushrooms and creamy goat cheese.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Pasta
Keyword beet, mushroom, tortellini
Prep Time 2 hourshours
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
Resting Time 2 hourshours
Total Time 2 hourshours20 minutesminutes
Servings 4people
Calories 400kcal
Ingredients
Beet Pasta
1medium beetabout 84 grams, 3 oz
3large eggs
1large yolk
1teaspoonolive oil
3cupsall-purpose flour382 grams, 13.5 oz
1teaspoonfine sea salt
Wild Mushroom Filling
4cupsof maitake mushroomsor any other mushroom, chopped very finely (about 340 grams, 12 oz)
1garlic cloveminced
2tablespoonsbutter or olive oil
Saltfreshly ground pepper to taste
2ouncescreamy goat cheese56 grams
Garlic Sage Sauce
3garlic clovessliced in half
1/4cupgood quality olive oil
4sage leavesplus more for garnish
Instructions
Beet Pasta
To make the fresh pasta with beets, start by washing your beet. Dry it and rub olive oil on it’s entire skin. Sprinkle it with kosher salt, and wrap in a piece of aluminum foil.
Bake in a pre-heated 350F oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Pierce it with a knife to test for doneness. Beet should be soft.
Let beet cool down and proceed to skin it.
Puree beet in a small food processor or blender.
To make the pasta, you may use a food processor, or just your hands, as long as the beets are already pureed.
If using the food processor, mix pureed beets, eggs, yolk, and olive oil, and process until incorporated, just a few pulses.
Add flour and salt to the food processor and pulse a few times to kind of bring the dough together.
It won’t come together entirely and you don’t want to keep processing your dough.
So just turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead it by hand for a few minutes until it has a very vibrant pink color. Dough should be smooth.
If not using the food processor, simply dump all of the flour plus salt on top of your clean counter. Then, open a hole in the center of the flour mount.
In a small bowl mix the eggs, yolk and beets puree with a fork, just until yolks are broken up a little bit.
Add liquids to the center of the flour mount and gradually incorporate the flour with the liquid using a fork. Once dough has formed, you can start kneading it with your hands for about 8-10 minutes.
Wrap dough in plastic wrap, or place it inside a zip loc bag. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, up to overnight.
When it’s time to roll the dough out, I recommend a pasta machine. You can for sure use a rolling pin, as I’ve done for a long time before I had a pasta machine. However, it does make things easier.
I divided my dough into 6 pieces and rolled each one out 3 times on number 1, while folding the dough over each time I rolled it in that setting.
After that, I rolled it once in each setting up to number 5, without folding the dough.
Place pieces of rolled out pasta dough in a floured baking sheet. Cover with a clean kitchen towel, sprinkle the kitchen towel with flour, and place the other sheet of pasta dough on top, and keep doing that until you are done rolling out your pasta. I usually use about 8 kitchen towels to do this.
You have to keep your pasta sheets covered or they will dry and you won’t be able to shape your tortellini.
Which is why you must have your filling ready before you start rolling out your pasta dough so you can proceed with filling and shaping the tortellini before the dough dries out.
Filling
You want to have your filling ready before you start rolling out the pasta dough. For that reason, I’d recommend making the filling and refrigerating it, so it’s ready to go when you decide to roll out your pasta dough.
Heat up the olive oil or butter in a pan. Add garlic and sautee briefly until lightly golden. Add chopped mushrooms. Cook for a few minutes until mushrooms are cooked through. Season with salt and peppers if desired. Once mushrooms cool down, mix them with the goat cheese.
Cut your pasta sheets into circles. I used a 3 inch cookie cutter.
Start filling the circles as you go, so they don’t get dry before you get a chance to form the tortellini. Check out the post above for pictures on how to shape the tortellini.
Basically, place a small amount of goat cheese, and a small amount of mushroom filling in the middle of the pasta circles.
Use a little bit of water and run your finger around the edges of half of the circle. Fold the dough over itself to form a semi circle shape.
Then proceed to join the tips of the semi circle together, using a tiny bit of water to make them stay together.
When I say a tiny bit, I mean a tiny little bit. More like a moist finger than an actual drop of water.
Place shaped tortellini in a floured baking sheet.
Boil immediately or freeze. I have frozen my tortellini for up to 1 month before and it held up nicely. Just make sure you package it correctly.
Sauce
Place olive oil, sage and garlic in a large sauté pan.
Over medium heat, start to infuse the olive oil with the garlic and the sage. Cook the mixture for about 10 minutes, until the garlic starts to brown.
In the mean time, have a large pot of salted water boiling.
Add tortellini to the water in batches. Boil for about 5 minutes, until tortellini floats to the top and the edges are softened.
Then I like to use one of those slotted spoons to transfer the cooked ravioli to the pan with the garlic sauce. Remember to have the heat on high so you can slightly brown the ravioli, making it extra delicious, and giving the dish some more umami!
This way, a bit of the pasta water will also be incorporated in the delicious sauce. It will reduce and thicken as it finishes cooking in the olive oil.
Top with fresh sage leaves and I chose to top mine with some extra parmesan cheese, of course.