This Monday marks our return to rehearsals for Pax Christi Chorale, which changes the dynamics and especially the timing of our dinners. This is also the first “in season” dinner since we started blogging. I was thinking that we should go with something simple and tasty, to get us back into the groove of the shortened dinner schedule. Shawn spent a good deal of time on the weekend perusing cookbooks and recipes online. At one point he pointed to Jamie Oliver’s Italy book and said “I want to make Rotolo.” Ro-what? Then he told me I could get out the pasta machine, so I’m in. This week is just our trio, to ease us back into the music season.
We started with a Roasted Yellow Tomato Soup. The yellow tomatoes were picked at their peak, and roasted in the oven, to bring out their sweetness. Each was topped with a toasted crostini and fresh basil.
Rotolo originated from the region of Emilia-Romagna, and it is simply a sheet of pasta covered with filling, rolled up to form a roulade, then poached and served in slices with sauce. In Italian, a rotolo is also a measure of weight roughly equivalent to 800 grams, which remained in use in southern Italy until the end of the 19th century. So is it Rotolo, because it is rolled, or heavy???
We started with fresh pasta rolled into sheet as wide at the machine would make them. Each sheet was cut to just under the length of a tea towel, then 4 sheets were combined to make one large pasta sheet.
For the filling we roasted butternut squash with fennel, red chili and coriander seeds. The original recipe called for spinach, but with Swiss Chard in the garden, why buy spinach? The Swiss chard was sautéed with nutmeg and garlic. Once cooled, the squash was placed along one edge of the pasta sheet, the rest was spread with the swiss chard, and topped with ricotta and parmesan.
Using the towel, the whole thing is rolled up like a jelly roll, wrapped in the towel and trussed up with string.
The Rotolo log is lowered into boiling water, tea towel and all for 30 minutes, then sliced. We served it with a sauce made with clarified butter and sage leaves fried until crisp, and dusted with finely grated parmesan.
I was quite surprised that after 30 minutes, the pasta was still al dente, but the squash and swiss chard were the stars. This dish is going on our list.
For dessert, we wanted to take advantage of all of the fresh berries that are available. We bought raspberries, blackberries and strawberries and made a Mascarpone filled cake with sherried berries, served with herbal tea.
As it turns out my concerns about timing were without merit. We actually finished ahead of schedule, which gave us a bit of time to catch up on the past and look forward to a new season. Now that our bodies and friendships have been fed, we can look to making music and perhaps feed our souls, singing compositions by the likes of Hubert Parry, Edward Elgar, and our “close personal friends” Stephanie Martin and Jared Tomlinson (concert on October 19th 3:00PM, Grace Church on the Hill.)
Yum, what time is dinner next week? 😉
Letitia, the timing for Monday night dining is in the blog…. just keep reading those archives.
Love you guys : ) The cake was even better served up as a left over postlude to my first day back at York. That was manna from heaven. Thanks xoxo
With the cream filling, in the cake, I thought it might go soggy, but I think the Mascarpone stabilized it. I think it was better the second day. I’ll let you now how it is after 3 days, because there is still some left. That was a pleasant treat last night… cake on the deck.
Wow… that looked amazing, and it was your “quick” dinner???? I’m lovin’ all the pictures…best one yet I think 🙂
Thanks, Kathy. The soup was made a couple of weeks ago and was in the freezer. The Rotolo and Cake were made on Sunday so all we had to do on Monday was warm up the soup and pasta and Dave made the cake filling and made the sherried berries when he got home. It’s all in the organization!