Ricotta Ravioli: Two Ingredients, One Hour, No Tricks

Ravioli have a reputation as a patient-Sunday project, when really they come down to two ingredients. For four servings: 300 g of flour, three eggs, a pinch of salt. Pile it all onto the board, knead for ten minutes until the dough is smooth and springs back slowly under your finger. Then wrap it and let it sit for half an hour.

That pause is not the cook being comfortable. Freshly kneaded dough is elastic and fights the rolling pin; after thirty minutes it stretches thin without snapping back. Skip it and you will spend the rest of the evening working against your own material.

Ricotta carries water, and water is the enemy of every sealed edge. So it goes into a sieve for an hour first, weighted down with a plate. After that, stir it together with grated parmesan, a little lemon zest, freshly grated nutmeg, salt and pepper. Taste it now, not later: wrapped in dough, a filling always reads milder than it did on the spoon.

Roll the sheet thin enough that the grain of the board shows through. Place mounds of filling four centimetres apart, moisten the gaps with a wet finger, lay the second sheet over the top. Press outward from each mound and push the air out before you cut. A trapped bubble expands in boiling water and tears the ravioli open.

Cook them in plenty of salted water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil, because fresh ravioli are too delicate for rough movement. Three to four minutes is enough; they float up on their own.

Meanwhile melt butter in a wide pan until it foams and smells nutty, drop in sage leaves and add a ladle of the cooking water. The starch in that water binds fat and liquid into a sauce that clings to the pasta instead of pooling on the plate. Lift the ravioli in, swirl once, serve immediately. Nobody needs cream here.