Tiny pasta bags are very popular in all countries, but they differ from one another. One is more of a vegetarian dish and the other is more of a meat dish. Here's how you can tell the difference!
Who doesn't love a creamy filling hidden in a thin layer of pastry, topped with sage butter or light sauces and served with lots of cheese? Cuisines from different nations make similar ones, but there's no denying the perfection of the Italians' tortellini and tortelloni. Its long tradition and millennia-old recipes never fail to impress.
What is tortelloni?
A tortelloni is a stuffed, keyhole-shaped pasta, which is made by folding a round piece of dough in half, folding it over the filling, twisting the two ends together and tying the dough into a circle. Tortelloni, popular in the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions of northern Italy, are traditionally filled with a vegetarian mixture of ingredients such as ricotta cheese, leafy greens (such as spinach and parsley), crumbled amaretti biscuits or pumpkin puree.
Once filled and shaped, tortelloni are most often cooked in a simple sage butter sauce until tender. However, it can also be served with a variety of sauces, such as pesto, gombo ragout, cream sauces. Because of its vegetarian filling, this popular pasta dish is traditionally served on Christmas Eve in Italy, as the Catholic Church recommends abstaining from eating meat on the day before the holy holiday.
Did you know? The favourite tortelloni of autumn is stuffed with mushrooms. Any flavourful mushrooms can be used, but my favourite is toadstools, which are chopped, roasted, seasoned and mixed with a little béchamel. When chilled, they are stuffed into the centre of the pastry bags.
Let's look at the tortelloni's counterpart, tortellini!
Tortellini comes from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy - home to famous traditional Italian ingredients such as Parmigiano-Reggiano, prosciuotto di parma and Modena balsamic vinegar. The filling of tortellini is mostly made up of minced meat (a mixture of mortadella and prosciutto, for example), eggs and Parmesan. The dough is stretched thinly, with a small spoonful of filling in the middle, which in this case is not rolled, but simply closed in a circle, even with a fork. According to local legend, the tortellini is shaped like the navel of the goddess Venus. However, the question of whether Bologna or Modena was the birthplace of tortellini is still debated, as they are served heavenly in both places.
The difference
The main difference between the two pastas is the size of the dough and the traditional fillings. Although the two similar the shape, the tortelloni are bigger than the tiny little tortellini. But perhaps most strikingly, tortelloni are traditionally filled with a combination of vegetarian ingredients, while tortellini are characterised by a meat filling.
