PASTA MEDALLIONS WITH SPINACHS AND "REQUESÓN"

I believe this is an anti-stress recipe. I dont mean that cooking this dish will relax you. Well, it will indeed, because if you enjoy cooking, then cooking this recipe will relax you anyway. But I refer to the fact that some dishes have a strange quality, which is that they create tense  at the most inappropriate moment.

Sometimes, we tend to choose complicated recipees which involve last minute arrangements. While our guests are letf alone and unattended, we are in the kitchen involved in thes last-minute cooking fuss. Like it or not, this is very stressing.

Frecuently, when I have guests at home and want to enjoy the fun, I try to choose those recipes which can be prepare beforehand. When my guests arrive, the cleaner and tidier the kitchen, the better.

This is a spectacular recipe. It will make you bright and shine at the table. It may look like you spent the whole morning cooking in the kitchen. However, its not that difficult and you can have everything under control.  No hurry, no stress, no tension. Just remember to pre-heat your oven and introduce the tray 15 minutes before serving. Meanwhile, you can enjoy a funny aperitif with your friends, drinking a glass of wine and having a lovely chat. And when the oven rings "please, everyone to the table!".

This is home-made pasta. With a pasta-maker you will get a thin pasta, but you can do it also hand made with a rolling pin.

The recipe comes form a book by the Spanish journalist, living in Italy, Paloma Gómez Borrero: El libro de la pasta (the book of pasta).

INGREDIENTS (6 guests)

Pasta ingredients

- 3 Eggs

- 300 grs. Flour

- 1 Olive oil tbsp.

- Salt

1. Prepare the dough with the ingredients.
2. Leave the dough resting for a while.

For the filling

- 600 grs. Spinachs

- Nutmeg

- Black pepper

- Butter

- Salt

- 250 grs. Requesón (this is Spanish curd cheese, what  italians call "ricotta")

3. Boil spinachs and cut them. Fry the spinachs lightly with the butter. 

4. Add the curd cheese.

5. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg.

6. Made the pasta sheets (use the pasta-maker or hand made with the rolling pin). Use flour to prevent the past sticking to the working surface. 

7. Spread the filling over the pasta sheets.

8. Make rolls carefully. They can be easily broken.

9. Wrap the rolls with clingflim.

10. Put the the wrapped rolls in a big saucepan full of water. Boil them for 1 hour.

The sauce

For this recipe I used a white sauce. To get a more interesting redish colour, I mixed it with some tomate sauce.

11. Meanwhile prepare the white sauce.

12 .Once the rolls are boiled and cooled down, unwrap them and cut in slices.

13. Put the slices on an oven-tray and add the sauce.

14. Oven pre-heated 190º. Then 15 minutes cooking and the your pasta medalions will be ready to serve.

Bon appetit!!