I haven’t been bashful here about my complete love for food shows and famous chefs. So when Iron Chef put out a special of Batali and Emeril vs Flay and White House Chef Cristeta Comerford with food from the White House garden I was as giddy as a squirrel with an acorn. Then I watched Batali make a raviolo (basically a giant ravioli) filled with sweet potato and ricotta with an EGG in the middle. I swear I swooned aloud. I quickly vowed to make these.
I couldn’t find much of a recipe (the one on Food Network is more complex and uses spinach instead of sweet potato) so I kind of just made it up as I went along. I boiled up some sweet potatoes and them mashed them with ricotta, brown sugar, and a pinch of nutmeg and just added items until it tasted right.
I used the same pasta recipe as last time but ran it through on 5 a few more times to make it a wee bit thinner.
Even Mike (“Magic Hands”) got in on the action and helped me with extra hands for the rolling stage.
I then spread the sheet on a floured surface.
Spooned the sweet potato mixture on and used the back of my spoon to make a well.
I then cracked an egg into the well.
Put some egg wash “glue” around the filling and then folded the sheet over to create a pocket. I used my fingers to seal the edges and then used a pizza cutter to slice them apart.
I was soooo nervous that they would fall apart in the pot of water.
Since they were GINORMOUS!
And I had a lot of leftover filling and dough (more than I had eggs) so I made some littler guys without the egg.
SOOO easy and so much fun to make.
I cooked them up and was careful to lower them into the pot and scoop them out. But they all held up perfectly!
The first night we put brown butter on them, however, we had tomato sauce with the leftovers the next night and actually preferred this. (We also had some delicious, easy to make, pan seared scallops the first night).
I was SO excited to cut it open. It just oozed out like a perfect poached egg.
It was ALMOST as good as I had imagined. Next time I will try to see if I can use less filling and still have enough of a well for the egg (they were just TOO big) and leave less side room around the filling where the pasta folded over. I’ll also be sure to serve it with tomato sauce.
This was so easy to do, yet looked so impressive. Some day I will wow someone (besides Magic Hands) with this.
