Tortelli Maremmani

Tortelli maremmani are the best-known stuffed pasta of the Maremma and a fixture of its rural table. Their roots are traced to peasant cooking, in which families stretched simple, available ingredients — sheep's-milk ricotta, garden and field greens, a little cheese — into a celebratory dish for Sundays and feast days. The Maremma version is distinguished by its large size and the broad pasta border around the filling, locally called il marciapiede or la frangia. The filling is classically ricotta with spinach or chard, sometimes enriched with wild field herbs; in some Maremma towns nettles or mixed wild greens replace the chard. The dish has no fixed author or date and belongs to the wider Tuscan and central-Italian family of ricotta-and-greens filled pastas, but the oversized, thick-bordered Maremma style is its own local identity.

Large, tender pasta pillows with a soft, milky filling that gives way at once. The ricotta is light, creamy and faintly sweet, the chard or spinach earthy and green behind it, lifted by a whisper of nutmeg and the salt of Parmesan; the egg pasta is silky where it wraps the filling and pleasantly chewier at the thick border. With butter and sage the dressing is nutty and clean, letting the filling speak; with boar ragù the same parcels turn rich and gamey, the soft cheese a foil to the dark meat. The first taste is melting ricotta and butter, then the green note of the chard. Made well the pasta is thin and the filling moist and balanced; a heavy hand makes the filling dense or the pasta gummy.

This is fresh egg pasta filled with a drained soft-cheese mixture. The dough is made with egg, whose proteins and fat give a supple, elastic sheet that can be rolled thin and sealed without tearing; resting the dough relaxes the gluten so it rolls out smoothly. The filling must be relatively dry, so the cooked greens are squeezed hard of their water and the ricotta is well drained — excess moisture would make the filling slump and the pasta split or go soggy in the water. Nutmeg and Parmesan season it, and the egg or the cheese's own protein helps the filling hold together once cooked. The wide pasta border is sealed firmly to keep the filling in during boiling, then the parcels are cooked briefly in well-salted water just until the pasta is tender and the filling heated through. A gentle dressing — butter and sage, or a slow ragù — coats without overwhelming the delicate filling; butter emulsifies with a little starchy pasta water to cling to the pasta.