Tortellini Panna e Prosciutto

Tortellini themselves are a documented treasure of Emilia, claimed by both Bologna and Modena, where the navel-shaped, filled pasta has been made for centuries; the well-known tale that the shape was modelled on Venus's navel is folklore, not history. The filling has an official codification: on 7 December 1974, the Dotta Confraternita del Tortellino and the Italian Academy of Cookery registered a recipe by notarial deed in Bologna, specifying pork loin, prosciutto, mortadella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, egg and nutmeg, and stipulating that the traditional dish be tortellini in brodo, served in capon broth. The cream-and-ham sauce, by contrast, is a modern and pan-Italian home treatment, not an ancient Bolognese tradition. Its lineage is usually traced to tortellini alla panna, said to have been created at the Ristorante La Cesarina in Bologna in the 1940s; the addition of cooked ham came later, and the dish became a national favourite during the postwar boom and especially the 1980s, the heyday of cooking cream in Italy, carried by the spread of fresh and dried packaged tortellini.

The tortellini give first: a yielding, tender pasta skin, then a savoury, faintly sweet filling of cured meats and cheese. Around them the sauce is pure comfort — warm, velvety cream rounded with melted Parmigiano, threaded with soft, salty ribbons of ham. Sweet peas pop here and there for contrast, a grate of nutmeg lifts the dairy, and the whole bowl is mild, rich and gently coating, the kind of plate that disappears fast.

The sauce is built on a gentle cream reduction. Cream is simmered with butter just long enough for some water to evaporate and the remaining fat and milk solids to thicken into a coating sauce; pushed too hard it would break into greasy curds, so it is kept at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil. The cooked ham is only warmed through, never fried hard, which would toughen it and drive off its delicate flavour. Parmigiano is stirred in off the heat: below roughly 82°C its proteins and fat melt smoothly into the cream, whereas direct high heat makes the cheese seize into rubbery strings. The filled tortellini are the delicate part — boiled briefly, since fresh ones cook in two to three minutes, and kept at a soft simmer rather than a violent boil, because hard agitation tears the thin pasta and bursts the seams, spilling the filling. They are finished directly in the sauce with a little starchy pasta water, whose dissolved amylose helps the cream emulsify and cling to every parcel. Nutmeg is the classic partner to cream and cheese, its warm aroma cutting the richness.