Chi: VOV24/7’s Food Delight is back this week with new recipes.

You don’t have to wait for any longer. On today’s show, let’s explore more about Italian cuisine with chef Fabrizio Aceti who is in Vietnam now to introduce authentic recipes from Italy.

Italian chef Fabrizio Aceti(Photo: Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi Hotel)

Fabrizio: My name is Fabrizio Aceti . I come from Italy. I have lived in Asia for 16 years. I am now in Vietnam to set up the menu for Angelina, the Italian restaurant and lounge in the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi.

Chi: Chef Aceti is known for his hearty, yet healthy cooking style. What have you got for today’s menu?

Fabrizio: I come up with quite a common dish in Italy, Ravioli.

Chi: Great. That’s one of my favorite. “Ravioli” refers to all kinds of filled Italian pasta where a thin layer of dough wraps around a filling. Common fillings may include meat, cheese, vegetables and vary greatly between the countless regional recipes.

Fabrizio: This dish is common because it’s light. It’s got Ricotta cheese, green spinach, pasta dough which is not really heavy, tomato sauce. So, it’s simple, you can also see the color of Italian flag with green, white, red and also topped up with parmesan cheese.

Chi: The fillings for ravioli are diversified, but today, Fabrizio will introduce to us ravioli with spinach, a popular ingredient in Vietnam. Making the dough for ravioli is the first process.

Fabrizio:  First of all, for the pasta you need white flour, wheat flour. For each 150 gram, you add 2 yolk eggs and also to fill when you make the dough because sometimes the eggs have different size, so the weight is different. The eggs will bring the protein part and also water part because the yolk is water.

Chi: Apart from that, what else should we need for a perfect ravioli?

Fabrizio: Olive oil, spinach, tomato sauce, parmesan cheese and basil leaves, Ricotta cheese available at supermarket.

Chi: It seems that cheese is the basic ingredient in many Italian dishes. What is the flavor difference between parmesan cheese and ricotta cheese?

Fabrizio:  Ricotta is usually used for filling. It’s quite light and it binds together. It’s not very strong in flavor. The parmesan cheese is stronger and more concentrated, give you more mineral and more fat. 

(Photo: Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi Hotel)

Chi: Let’s start with the dough.

Fabrizio: The pasta dough is made by flour, eggs, 150 grams, 2 eggs. It depends on the size, a little bit olive oil. When you do the mixing of the dough, you roll it very thin. The dough, you knid it.

Chi: Is there any consideration when making dough?

Fabrizio: When we knid the protein and gluten together to keep the pasta dough smooth, otherwise, like tearing apart a piece of paper. Don’t warm it a lot, keep it in the room temperature. When the dough is rest, you can roll it thin.

Chi: For the filling, the main ingredient is spinach, right? I see that you only take the upper part and spinach leaves. Why’s that?

Fabrizio: The stem is too strong and the flavor is in the leaves. When we have spinach leaves, you have a little pot on the fire, put a little bit olive oil, one crushed garlic clove to give flavor. After 1 minute, you remove it from the oil. You add the spinach which is raw before. Then you cook fast. When you have, you remove it from the pan. With a small napkin, you squeeze the spinach to release the excessive water. When it’s done, you chop it. Usually, you do five spoons of chopped spinach and one spoon of ricotta cheese. You season it to your liking with salt and pepper with parmesan cheese and your filling is ready.

After that, you wrap it like a ball, you put it in the ravioli and wrap it up.

Chi: For spinach, you can boil it fast or let it raw before you mix with other things. It’s better to boil it because you don’t have to chop it well. Now that we have pieces of ravioli. It looks like small pillows. But, it hasn’t finished. The next step is to boil it.

Fabrizio: Ravioli  must be cooked, it it’s not cooked, it will a little bit raw, it is not digestable, so it must be cooked.

Chi: The flavor of ravioli is incomplete without tomato sauce. How is the sauce made, Fabrizio?

Fabrizio: You use tomato tin, you have olive oil, hot in the pan. You put chopped garlic, add tin tomato, you cook it, not too long, 20 minutes, salt and pepper. That’s it. You can add basil leaves together. You add some basil on the top when you finish together some slices of parmesan cheese.

Chi: You guys can try making ravioli with detailed recipe by chef Fabrizio Aceti.

You don’t need so complicated ingredients, just things around in the kitchen like pork, beef, or even vegetables, and you have a real ravioli. Good luck!

Join us again on the next show of VOV24/7 Food Delight.