We have no idea if this is anything close to a traditional Italian pasta; we’ve never seen pasta filled with broccoli and Asiago cheese. Even so, we think this dish fits the spirit of an Italian staple. It’s pasta, for one, but, more importantly, it happens to use a few other ingredients that we had in excess. From what we see in traditional Italian recipes, they make do with what they have and try not to waste food. To us, it sounds as if Italians might be the original scratchers.
We had a huge stalk of broccoli in the refrigerator, and we’d just picked up some aged Asiago cheese at half price, so we figured we could use the two together to make a nice dinner. We did think about broccoli gratin, but we really like pasta, so the idea of some pasta filled with broccoli and Asiago cheese was born.
Broccoli and Asiago Agnolotti with Mushrooms
Ingredients
- 8 ounces fresh pasta dough, ready to roll (see note)
- 2 cups chopped broccoli
- Salt
- 2 ounces grated Asiago cheese (1/2 cup)
- 1 egg
- Bread crumbs
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 2 Tbs unsalted butter
- 2 Tbs finely chopped onion
- 6 ounces sliced mixed mushrooms
Instructions
- Place broccoli in a small saucepan with about an inch of salted water over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer until completely tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and immediately rinse with cold water. Drain completely.
- Transfer broccoli and cheese to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until chopped, about 30 seconds. Add egg and process until smooth. If needed, add bread crumbs to thicken the mixture to a paste that holds it shape. Season with salt and pepper and pulse to combine.
- Transfer broccoli mixture to a piping bag.
- Divide pasta into four pieces, and, working with a piece at a time, roll into a strip about 3 inches wide and 16 inches long. Trim one long edge with a fluted cutter. Pipe filling onto the pasta sheet, leaving the ends bare.
- Roll the pasta up and over the filling, making a tube filled with broccoli mixture. Press the ends closed. Use your fingers to press the pasta into small pillows, then use the fluted cutter to cut into individual pillows, and transfer to a lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining pasta dough, folding any scraps into the next piece of dough.
- Place the agnolotti in the freezer for 60 minutes, then transfer to a freezer bag for longer-term storage. Agnolotti can be cooked directly from the freezer.
- Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and mushrooms, season with salt and pepper, and fry until mushrooms are browned in places. Reduce heat to keep warm.
- Meanwhile, bring a large kettle of salted water to a simmer over medium-high heat. Add agnolotti and simmer until tender, about 5 minutes.
- Use a slotted spoon to transfer to the skillet with the mushrooms. Increase heat, add about 1/4 cup of the pasta water, and simmer until everything is heated through.
- Serve in warmed bowls, topped with additional grated cheese, if desired
Notes
Ingredient discussion:
If you don’t have Asiago cheese, use any strong-flavored hard grating cheese you like. Parmegiano-Reggiano, Grana Padano, or Pecorino Romano are good choices. While you probably won’t taste it in the filling, use good eggs from healthy, well-raised hens. Healthy hens mean healthy eggs, and you can find eggs from well-raised hens at farmer’s markets, or even possibly from your neighbor. A lot of people have started raising backyard hens. For the mushrooms, use a mixture of varieties you like.
Procedure in detail:
Cook broccoli. Place the broccoli in a small saucepan with about an inch of water over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, until the broccoli is very tender, about 15 minutes. Make sure it’s very tender; you don’t want your filling to have tough bits as people eat it.
Shock broccoli. Once the broccoli is cooked, drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking and lock in the green color. It might not show when you serve the pasta, but it’s not that much of an effort to run it under cold water, either, so take the time to do it. Let the broccoli drain thoroughly.
Process broccoli and cheese. Transfer the broccoli and cheese into the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to break up the big pieces, then let it run 15-30 seconds to chop everything finely.
Add egg. Add the egg and process until combined into a paste. The egg will hold the filling together after it’s been cooked; without it, the filling might leak out into the water while you’re cooking the pasta, defeating the purpose of filled pasta.
Add breadcrumbs. We can’t tell you how much breadcrumbs you need to add, because it depends on how much moisture is in your broccoli. It might be none, or it might be over 1/4 cup. You’ll know, though, because you want to have a paste that holds its shape and doesn’t ooze liquid when you scrape a bare spot in the bowl. So, if needed, add breadcrumbs a tablespoon at a time, pulsing to incorporate and checking the consistency of the filling between additions.
Season. Season the filling mixture with salt and pepper as you see fit. We think that black pepper works really well with broccoli and Asiago cheese, so we added a lot of pepper, maybe as much as 1/2 teaspoon, but you’re making this, so you choose the amount.
Transfer to a piping bag. We can’t recommend using a piping bag strongly enough. It makes the job so easy. We buy disposable piping bags in rolls of 100 online and find them so useful for piping filling and batters, in addition to piping frosting.
Shape. We have more detailed instructions on our Shaping Agnolotti post, but we’ve included some photos that show the technique of filling and shaping agnolotti, which we think is the easiest shape to make.
Freeze. Once you’ve filled and shaped the pasta, place in the freezer for about an hour. This will make them easier to handle, and it’ll allow you to transfer them to bags for longer-term storage. The agnolotti can be cooked directly from the freezer.
Fry onions and mushrooms. Heat the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat until sizzling and foamy. Add the onions and mushrooms, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and fry until the mushrooms are cooked through and browned in spots, about 8-10 minutes. Reduce heat and keep warm while you cook the pasta.
Simmer agnolotti. For filled pasta, you want to simmer them in salted water, not boil. If you boil them, they’ll break apart. Bring a large kettle of salted water to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, and add the agnolotti, figuring on about a dozen per serving. At first they’ll sink to the bottom, but continue simmering and stirring gently with a slotted spoon and they’ll start to float. Once floating, simmer for about an additional 5 minutes, or until done.
Combine with mushrooms. Use the slotted spoon to transfer the agnolotti to the skillet and stir gently to combine. Add about 1/4 cup of pasta water, increase the heat, and simmer until everything is heated through and you have a slightly thickened sauce, about 5 minutes.
Serve. Divide between heated bowls and top with additional cheese, if desired.
Sure, this seems may seem to be a lot of trouble for a single dinner, but, really, once you get used to making filled pasta, it’s not too bad. We can generally roll and fill about 4 dozen agnolotti in about 30 minutes; that’s enough for 4 servings. They freeze really well, and, since they cook right from the freezer in about five minutes, we can have a quick and easy meal when time is tight. Five stars.
