Today we give you our delicious recipe for Tortellini in parsley sauce. But let us have a look at the history of tortellini first.
Tortellini have been a tradition in Modena for centuries, and each family has opened their menus with them on family occasions, possibly personally varied according to the recipes of their ancestors.
The origin of the tortellini is actually strange and goes back to the first years of the 17th century when Alessandro Tassoni, in his comic heroic poem “La Secchia Rapita” (“The kidnapped bucket”), tells of an incident involving Venus, Bacchus and Mars.
On the way from the battlefields between the knights of Modena and Bologna, who fought over the famous “kidnapped bucket”, these three deities stopped for a night at the “Corona” inn. The next morning Bacchus and Mars set off early and left Venus sleeping alone in the inn. When the goddess of love woke up and saw that she was alone, she was frightened and rang the bell to call for help.
Immediately the cross-eyed innkeeper came to her aid, who, when he saw her still naked, was so impressed by her voluminous body shapes that – when he returned to the kitchen, where he was preparing the pasta dough – he took a piece of it, cut it into squares, filled it, and after he had folded it up, turned it once around his finger to obtain a shape resembling the navel of Venus.
This is how the legend tells it, while reality is of course much more concrete and less poetic. The expert “Rezdora”, as the housewife was affectionately called, closed the tortellini in this way in order to prevent the filling from leaking out of the broth when the tortellini was being cooked.
The ritual of preparing tortellini was carried out a few days before the feast days, in the home of one or the other housewife, and this joint preparation of tortellini became a true social event reserved for housewives.
Try our delicious recipe tortellini in parsley sauce and enjoy a great dinner with your family.
Ingredients for Tortellini in parsley sauce
- 2 packs Tortellini, with spinach filling, fresh, from the refrigerated shelf
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 onion
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp oil
- 125 ml chicken broth
- 500 ml cream
- salt and pepper
- sugar
- tabasco
- 1 tsp lemon juice or more
- 2 bunch parsley, smooth
Preperation
Cook the tortellini for 2 minutes less than described on the packet. Fry the onion and garlic finely chopped in oil and butter until translucent. Add broth and cream and boil down until creamy. Flavour with salt, pepper, sugar, Tabasco and lemon juice.
Cook the tortellini for another 3 minutes in the finished sauce. Add finely chopped parsley and serve.
If you want to know more about Tortellini, have a look at the History of Tortellini.
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