Tortelli

Tortelli are an Italian filled pasta: squares of pasta dough folded or sealed over a filling. The filling depends on the place: ricotta and greens, pumpkin or potato. They belong to the filled pasta group and, by their dough, to egg pasta and fresh pasta.

The Emilia-Romagna list of traditional food products includes tortelli d'erbetta (torte d'erbeta) from the province of Parma. According to the regional sheet, the egg dough is cut into squares about 7 cm across, filled with spinach or chard, ricotta, cheese, butter and nutmeg, folded over and sealed. The first batch of the year is traditionally made on 23 June, the feast of St John. The same list has tortellacci, or tortelloni, from the Modena area: large tortelli, in the sheet's recipe 8 × 8 cm squares filled with ricotta and spinach or with meat.

In Lombardy, the Regione Lombardia recipe for the Mantuan tortello di zucca uses egg dough cut into rectangles of about 8 × 4 cm, filled with roasted pumpkin, crushed amaretti, Mantuan mostarda, Grana cheese, butter and nutmeg. In Tuscany, the regional sheet describes tortello di patate as a soft, yellow, square, ravioli-like pasta filled with boiled potatoes and cheese, made for at least 250 years in the provinces of Prato, Florence (Mugello), Arezzo, Siena and Pistoia.

The Parma sheet gives 6–7 minutes in salted water, then melted butter and grated Parmigiano. The Mantuan recipe boils them in salted water or, preferably, meat broth, and layers them with melted butter and Grana. Potato tortelli are eaten as a first course, typically with a beef or other meat ragù.