Kale & hazelnut confit garlic rotolo
Two weeks ago, I'd never even heard of a rotolo. But sometimes something pops up on your Instagram and you just can't get it out of your head. Fortunately, this time it was a pasta recipe and not the ill-fated lockdown clothing purchase I can only describe as "gay Jedi cardigan".
So what's a rotolo? It's filled pasta, but rolled and sliced rather than sealed up into individual parcels. A lasagna/ravioli compromise. You can simmer and serve, or parboil and bake in sauce. This is the former.
All the recipes in the first eight or nine thousand pages of a web search and any of my books it appeared in were stuffed with spinach and ricotta. This is a classic for a reason, sure. Yes, you can throw pumpkin or ham at it. But I wasn't in the mood.
Enter: Delicious Magazine's stone cold banger - cavolo nero and confit garlic linguine. You should absolutely make it as is, but for now let's fuck about with it. Curly kale because: a) it'll stand up to the longer cooking, and b) we'll need loads and it's cheaper. Bit of cheese for sharpness, umami, and a gesture toward protein. Hazelnuts for texture, and to pull together the cheesy and earthy flavours.
Get in loser, we're confit-ing garlic.
Ingredients:
Pasta
The quickest way to peel this much garlic is to shake the everliving fuck out of it in a jar. The skins almost fall off.
00 pasta flour, 300g
Medium eggs, 3
A little salt
You might need some water
Filling
Curly kale, 400g
Cream cheese (or ricotta), 2tbsp
Comté (or another nutty-waxy alpine cheese), 100g
Garlic, 1 bulb or about 12 cloves
Chopped hazelnuts, 60g
Olive oil, really rather a lot but it doesn't have to be the good shit
Black pepper
Sauce
Passata, 500g
Onion, half or a small one or a big-ass shallot
Sugar, 1tsp
Soy sauce, 1/2tsp
Fennel seeds, 1/4tsp
Chilli flakes, big pinch
Salt, big pinch
Honestly, just make whatever tomato sauce you make. This is here for completeness.
Serves 4 generously. For a little something else on the plate, I'd serve this with seared courgette.
Instructions:
Yes, we're going to make the pasta. This is actually less hassle than farting about simmering and tessellating lasagne sheets. Although I'm willing to admit that if you don't have a stand mixer the difference might be marginal.
Pasta - Put the flour salt and eggs into a mixer or bowl, and work them into a smooth, silky dough. This takes about 5 mins in a mixer and the kneading will take about twice that by hand. If the eggs are small, you might need to add a little water to bring it all together. You could even use an extra yolk. Cover the dough in cling film and rest it while you do everything else.
Rachel Roddy in Two Kitchens describes the ideal pasta dough texture as "smooth and soft as a baby's bum". If like me you are a childless man in his forties and cannot develop a frame of reference for that without ending up on a list, don't worry. The key part is that it's tightly elastic and not overly sticky.
Confit the garlic - peel the cloves and put them in a small pan with enough oil to cover. It's not going to be less than 100ml, realistically. Bring it up to a heat where there are just tiny bubbles forming around the cloves, and cook on low for about 20 mins until they're soft and unctuous. Remove the cloves, keep the oil. We’ll use some in this recipe and the rest will be delicious on basically anything.
While that happens, simmer the kale for 5-6 mins until tender, cool and drain well.
Put the kale, garlic, cream cheese and a splash of the garlic oil in a blender with plenty of black pepper and a little salt, and blitz to a rough paste.
It's up to you when you make the sauce - it'll parallelise with other steps - but I like to use the garlic oil and I don't like feeling stressed at the end, so I'd set it simmering while I assemble the rotolo.
For the sauce - finely dice the onion, and fry it gently in a good slug of the garlic oil until soft, probably about 10 mins. Sprinkle in the fennel seeds and chilli flakes, stir a bit, and add the passata, soy, sugar, and salt. Simmer on low, stirring occasionally, for about half an hour. It should thicken slightly, but let it out with a little water if it goes too gloopy. Mine did here and I forgot to thin it which is why the pictures look like I plated up the rotolo with jam.
How you cook the rotolo depends a little on how much work space you have, and the diameter of your biggest saucepan. I'm going to assume we’re working with conventional shoebox UK kitchens, and making two. You might be able to do one giant roll if you have the space.
Divide the pasta dough in two. For each, roll it out out on a floured surface until it's nice and thin and approximately a 40cm by 30cm rectangle. Approximately. A funky oval is fine, you can trim it a little. Thinner is better - it swells in cooking.
Spread the filling over the pasta, leaving a little margin at the edges. Grate over the cheese, scatter over the hazelnuts, and roll it up. It doesn't have to be super tight - it will expand and hold its shape. Pinch the ednds shut. Roll it up in a tea towel or muslin, and secure the ends with string. Some recipes tie extra string round the middle. I guess this keeps the cloth secure but all it seemed to do for me was make the final roll look a bit weird.
Get a big pan of water simmering, and cook the rotolos on a gentle simmer, well submerged, for about half an hour.
Remove, drain, unwrap, and trim the edges. To serve, cut into thick slices, and plate on a bed of the tomato sauce.
Use more and thinner sauce than I made in the pictures - it's not dry, but it does need something.
I love the way this manages to look somehow fancy and ragged at the same time. Rustic chic? Is that still a thing? I do think it wants something on the side, however. Salad would make sense, but also it basically is a salad you origami'd, so what do you do?
I also served this with an attempt at onion focaccia that I had to style out as schiacciata. You can’t win ‘em all.
Next time, I'm gonna halve, criss-cross score, and sear courgettes and serve those on the side. I think they'll work well with the sauce.