“If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?” — Martin Scorsese
I have wanted to make this recipe for ages, but I held off because I am always a bit intimidated by the idea of making fresh pasta. It is easy to make the dough, but it can be time-consuming to make individual, filled pastas like ravioli and tortellini. Fresh tortellini has always been my favorite type of pasta though, so I finally relented. The cream sauce for this recipe also contains saffron, one of my favorite flavors!
Making these tortellini actually wasn’t difficult at all. It was kind of fun. We doubled the recipe and ended up making 200 tortellini, so we were able to freeze some to enjoy later.
The filling mainly consisted of artickoke hearts, garlic, white wine, and cashew cream. The sauce was a rich combination of shallots, white wine, cashew cream, saffron, and Earth Balance dairy-free butter.
Served tossed with fresh arugula and tomatoes, with a side of roasted potatoes and asparagus with smoked salt and pepper. From Tal Ronnen’s The Conscious Cook, page 164.
Tortellini Fact: Because of it’s shape, tortellini is also called “belly button” pasta.
200, woah! Nice work. I’ve never tried making my own pasta before due to the time commitment, but I bet it’s worth it.
Thank you so much, Hearthomemade! It was challenging to make that many, but we had a ton to freeze for later. If we hadn’t doubled the recipe it would have been a breeze. I just always try to double things so we don’t have to cook as often. It is definitely worth it to make your own and if you don’t take on a ridiculous amount of pasta like we did, it’s easier than it might sound. I’ve always made homemade gnocchi and ravioli, but I’ll bet spaghetti would be a nice one to start out with… in fact, I think I’ll try that myself soon! 😉
I’m with you, doubling and big batch is the way to go. I love doing that with nut butters and freezing them 🙂
Wow, very cool, Hearthomade! I didn’t realize that you can freeze nut butters, great idea! 🙂
I’ve never made my own pasta, but I’m sure it’s worth the effort (especially, as you say, if the effort was fun!). This meal looks absolutely delicious!!
Hi Celeste! Thanks for your sweet comment. You’re right, it was tasty and now I’m craving more homemade tortellini! What’s a girl to do? 😉