Italian Bologna Green Pasta | Balanzoni Bolognesi
Balanzoni are the filled pasta of Bologna that never left the city. Tortellini travelled the world and tagliatelle became shorthand for the whole region, but the balanzone stayed inside the walls, made at home, and named after a man who does not exist: Dottor Balanzone, the pompous lawyer of the Bolognese commedia dell'arte, dressed in black and green.
The dough is green, coloured and faintly flavoured with spinach worked into the egg pasta, and the filling is ricotta and mortadella with Parmigiano Reggiano and nutmeg. Meat and cheese in the same pocket, one salted and cured, the other fresh and sweet. The dressing is butter and sage and nothing else, because anything more would bury the mortadella.
What makes them difficult is not the shaping but the balance. Spinach carries water into the dough, ricotta carries water into the filling, and mortadella carries fat into both. Get those three wrong and you have a heavy grey parcel. Get them right and a balanzone is one of the lightest filled pastas in Italy.
Yield: 4 servings of about 10 pieces. Prep: 1 hour 20 minutes. Dough rest: 45 minutes. Filling rest: 1 hour. Cook: 3 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Emilia Romagna, city of Bologna.
The Story
The name comes from the stage. Dottor Balanzone is the Bolognese mask of the commedia dell'arte, a bloated university jurist who speaks in mangled Latin and never stops talking, and his costume is black with green trim. A large green parcel, plump and self important on the plate, was an obvious joke, and the joke stuck. In dialect they are also called turtlaz, the big clumsy tortelli, which says the same thing less kindly.
They belong to Carnival, the season when the masks come out and when a household could justify buying mortadella. Bologna calls itself la grassa, the fat one, and mortadella is its clearest edible argument: finely emulsified pork, studded with cubes of neck fat and whole peppercorns, gently steamed for hours. Putting it inside pasta rather than between bread was the festive version, and the ricotta kept it from being overwhelming.
Green pasta is old in Emilia and was never about health. Spinach or nettle went into the dough because colour on the table signalled that someone had taken trouble, the same reason lasagne verdi are the correct lasagne in Bologna. The Accademia Italiana della Cucina has deposited formulas for tortellini and tagliatelle at the local chamber of commerce; balanzoni were never standardised that way, which is why every Bolognese cook insists their filling is the right one.
Ingredients
For the green pasta dough
Italian 00 flour, 2 1/4 cups (285 g)
Fresh spinach, 5 oz (140 g), or frozen leaf spinach, 3 oz (85 g)
Whole eggs, large, 2
Egg yolk, large, 1
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
For the ricotta and mortadella filling
Sheep or cow milk ricotta, drained, 9 oz (255 g)
Mortadella di Bologna, 5 oz (140 g)
Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated, 3/4 cup (75 g)
Egg yolk, large, 1
Grated nutmeg, 1/4 tsp
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the butter and sage dressing
Unsalted butter, cold, 4 1/2 oz (130 g)
Fresh sage leaves, 14 to 16
Reserved pasta cooking water, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
For finishing
Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated, 1/2 cup (50 g)
Grated nutmeg, a small pinch per plate
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Coarse sea salt, 1 tbsp per 4 quarts (15 g per 3.8 litres)
Preparation
Step 1: Cook and dry the spinach, then make the green dough
Wilt the spinach in a dry pan with only the water clinging to the leaves, about 2 minutes, then cool it and squeeze it as hard as you physically can in a clean cloth. You want a dense dry ball of roughly 2 oz (55 g). Blend it with the eggs and yolk. Mound the flour, make a well, add the spinach and egg mixture and the salt, and draw the flour in. Knead 10 minutes to a firm smooth dough, wrap and rest 45 minutes.
Step 2: Mix the ricotta and mortadella filling
Drain the ricotta in a sieve for at least an hour, longer if it is wet. Cut the mortadella into rough pieces and grind it to a smooth paste in a processor, or pass it twice through the fine plate of a grinder. Fold it into the ricotta with the Parmigiano, yolk, nutmeg, lemon zest, salt and a firm grind of pepper. Do not whip it. Chill an hour, so it holds a shape on the spoon.
Step 3: Roll the green sheets
Divide the dough into four, keeping three wrapped. Run the first through the widest setting of the machine, folding and repeating five times, then reduce one notch at a time to the second thinnest setting, around 1 mm. Green dough is stiffer and more fragile than plain egg dough, because the spinach fibre interrupts the gluten, so take it down gradually and dust lightly. Keep the other sheets covered.
Step 4: Cut the squares and fill them
Cut the sheet into squares of about 2 3/4 inches (7 cm) and place a rounded teaspoon of filling, roughly 1/2 oz (14 g), in the centre of each. Balanzoni are deliberately larger than tortelloni, but the filling still has to sit in a compact mound rather than spread towards the edges, which stops the seal from taking. Cover the squares you are not using.
Step 5: Fold and close the balanzoni
Fold each square into a triangle over the filling, pressing the air out from the mound outward, and seal the two open sides firmly. Then bring the two long corners around your fingertip, overlap them and pinch, leaving the third point standing up like a crest. That raised point is what tells a balanzone from a tortellone. Set them on a semola dusted tray, not touching.
Step 6: Salt the water and cook them to the right point
Bring 4 quarts (3.8 litres) of water to a rolling boil and salt it with 1 tablespoon (15 g) of coarse salt, no more, because the mortadella and Parmigiano are already salty. Lower the balanzoni in, stir once and drop to a lively simmer at once: a hard boil bursts the seams. They need 2 to 3 minutes from the moment they rise, and the dough should stay al dente at the folded corners. Draw a mug of cooking water and lift them out with a spider.
Step 7: Brown the butter and finish in the pan
Melt the cold butter in a wide pan over medium heat with the sage. Let it foam, subside and turn the colour of hazelnut skin, then take it off the flame and add two tablespoons of the reserved water, swirling hard until fat and water come together into a glossy sauce. Slide the balanzoni in with half the Parmigiano and toss by moving the pan, never with a spoon. Serve immediately.
Plating
Warm the plates to around 140°F (60°C). Butter is the entire sauce, and on a cold plate it seizes within seconds into a dull film that no amount of cheese will rescue.
Ten pieces per person, in a single loose layer with the crests turned upward so the shape reads. Balanzoni look wrong piled up and right spaced out on a wide shallow bowl, where the green shows against the white. Spoon the emulsion from the pan over them, then lay the fried sage leaves on top whole.
Finish with the rest of the Parmigiano Reggiano, grated from a height, a scrape of nutmeg and black pepper. Nothing green goes on top: the pasta is already green, and parsley or basil would be a second herb fighting the sage. In Bologna the cheese bowl stays on the table.
Professional Technique
The technique that defines this recipe is the management of water in the spinach. Raw spinach is about ninety percent water, and every gram that survives into the dough has to be paid for with extra flour, which makes the pasta tough and dulls the green to olive. Wilting the leaves without added water, cooling them and squeezing until nothing more comes out is the only way to get colour without hydration. From 5 oz (140 g) of raw leaves you should end with about 2 oz (55 g), and if yours weighs more you have not squeezed hard enough.
The second is the grinding of the mortadella. Diced mortadella folded through ricotta gives two separate textures and eats greasy, because the fat cubes melt out under heat. Ground to a paste, the emulsified pork behaves as it does in the salume itself: the fat stays bound, the flavour disperses through the ricotta, and the filling sets rather than running when the pasta is cut. Two passes through a fine plate, or thirty seconds in a processor, is the difference.
The third is the fold that produces the crest. A tortellone is closed into a ring with the point folded down; a balanzone keeps the third corner standing. This is not decoration: the raised point is a single layer of dough that cooks faster and stays firmer than the doubled seam, so each piece carries two textures at once. Pinch the overlapped corners hard enough to weld them, and leave the crest alone.
Texture and Moisture Control
Ricotta is the main variable. Supermarket ricotta can sit at seventy five percent water and turns the filling into a paste that weeps through the dough while the pasta waits on the tray. Drain it in a sieve for an hour at least, and if it still slumps, drain it overnight. The yolk and the Parmigiano bind what is left, and the filling should mound on a spoon and hold its edge.
The dough runs the other way. Spinach fibre interrupts the gluten network, so green pasta feels stiffer at the same hydration and tears more readily when rolled hard. Take the machine down one setting at a time, let the sheet relax if it fights you, and dust as little as possible, since surface flour both dries the sheet and prevents the seal.
The finish is an emulsion, not melted butter. The starch in the cooking water, the milk solids in the browned butter and the casein in the Parmigiano hold fat and water together into a sauce that coats the green dough. Build it off the flame, swirled rather than stirred, and serve within a minute. Reheating breaks it, and once broken the butter separates and the Parmigiano turns stringy.
Professional Mise en Place
The filling and the dough both want time, and the finish wants none. Everything below happens before service, so the last three minutes are only pasta, butter and a pan.
Equipment and tools
Pasta machine, or a rolling pin and a large wooden board
Food processor, or a grinder with a fine plate, for the mortadella
Fine mesh sieve and a clean cloth for draining and squeezing
Sharp pastry wheel or a long knife for cutting squares
Wide low sided pan and a spider skimmer
Prepared ahead
Ricotta draining in a sieve, from the night before if it is wet
Spinach wilted, squeezed and weighed, up to 1 day ahead
Filling mixed and chilled, up to 1 day ahead
Dough made and rested the same day, wrapped, up to 3 hours
Balanzoni shaped up to 3 hours ahead on semola dusted trays
Service setup
Large pot of salted water at a rolling boil
Cold butter weighed, sage picked and dry
Parmigiano Reggiano grated fresh, in two portions
A mug beside the pot for the cooking water
Plates warming at around 140°F (60°C)
Chef Tips
Buy real Mortadella di Bologna IGP and ask for it in one thick piece rather than sliced. A thick piece grinds to a cleaner paste and does not dry at the edges, and the IGP specification keeps the fat cubes and the pork quality where they need to be.
Weigh the squeezed spinach. It is the one number in this recipe that decides whether the dough works, and it cannot be judged by eye. Two ounces, 55 grams, of dense squeezed leaf against 285 grams of flour and three eggs is the ratio that gives colour without slackness.
Taste the filling before it goes near the pasta and be careful with salt. Mortadella and Parmigiano are both heavily salted, and the pasta water adds more, so the filling should taste very slightly underseasoned in the bowl. If it tastes perfect cold it will be too salty hot.
Test one before you cook the rest. Boil a single piece, cut it open, check that the seam has held and the filling has set rather than run. Whatever that piece tells you can still be fixed across the tray.
Common Mistakes
Wet spinach in the dough. Leaves squeezed casually carry enough water to force in extra flour, and the result is a tough olive coloured sheet that cracks at the fold. Squeeze in a cloth until nothing more comes out and weigh what is left.
Wet ricotta in the filling. Undrained ricotta weeps through the dough on the tray, softens the base of each piece and makes the seams let go in the water. Drain it in a sieve for an hour at the very least.
Dicing the mortadella instead of grinding it. Cubes melt under heat and release their fat inside the pocket, so the filling turns greasy and separates. Ground to a paste, the mortadella stays emulsified and the filling sets cleanly.
Boiling them hard. Large filled pasta thrown against the sides of a pot splits along the seam, and a split balanzone empties into the water. Bring the water to a boil, add the pasta, then drop straight to a lively simmer.
Flattening the crest. Folding the third corner down turns a balanzone into a tortellone and removes the single layer of dough that gives the shape its bite. Leave the point standing and pinch only the two overlapped corners.
Wine Pairing
Colli Bolognesi Pignoletto DOCG: The wine of the hills immediately south of Bologna, and the most exact match here. Grechetto Gentile gives green apple and white flower with a faintly bitter almond finish and a firm line of acidity that lifts the ricotta and cuts the browned butter. Take the still or lightly frizzante version, both dry, and serve it cold.
Lambrusco di Sorbara DOC: Ask for the secco. Sorbara is the palest and most acidic of the Lambruschi, closer to a sparkling rose than to a red, and its combination of bubble and sharp red berry acidity is the classic Emilian answer to pork fat. It scrubs the mortadella from the palate between mouthfuls without leaving any tannin behind on a delicate filling.
Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro DOC: The darker and more structured Lambrusco, again in the dry version. It carries more colour, more body and a light grip of tannin, which stands up to the Parmigiano and the nutmeg better than Sorbara does. Serve it at around 55°F (13°C): cold enough for the foam to stay tight, not so cold that the fruit closes down.
Gutturnio dei Colli Piacentini DOC: From the western end of Emilia, a blend of Barbera and Croatina: high acidity from the first grape, dark plummy fruit from the second. Look for the dry frizzante style. It has the energy to handle 4 1/2 oz of butter and the weight to sit beside a filling built on cured pork.
Romagna Sangiovese DOC: The still red option, from the hills east of Bologna. Romagna Sangiovese is lighter and more savoury than its Tuscan relatives, with sour cherry fruit and a dry herbal finish that runs directly alongside the fried sage. Keep to a young unoaked bottling, since oak would flatten the ricotta and dominate the pasta.
Storage & Reheating
The filling keeps refrigerated in an airtight container for 2 days, no longer, because ricotta sours quickly once worked with egg. Shaped raw balanzoni hold on a semola dusted tray, uncovered, in the refrigerator up to 3 hours; past that the filling wets the base of each piece and they stick.
For anything longer, freeze them raw on the tray, spaced so none touch, until completely solid, then transfer them to a sealed box for up to 6 weeks. Cook straight from frozen in simmering salted water, adding about 1 minute to the time, and never let them thaw first, which collapses the dough into a wet sheet that cannot be recovered.
Dressed balanzoni should be eaten at once, but leftovers keep refrigerated for 2 days. Reheat them in a wide pan over low heat with a knob of butter and two tablespoons of water, covered, about 3 minutes, shaking rather than stirring, then uncover and swirl until the sauce returns. Never microwave them: the ricotta grains and the dough goes rubbery.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings of about 10 pieces each:
Calories: 835 kcal
Total Fat: 51 g
Saturated Fat: 27 g
Trans Fat: 1.2 g
Unsaturated Fat: 20 g
Cholesterol: 285 mg
Sodium: 1290 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 60 g
Fiber: 3 g
Total Sugars: 3 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 34 g
Lactose: 3 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin K, folate, iron, zinc, selenium
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the cooking water is discarded rather than eaten, and the totals shift with the fat content of the ricotta and with how much butter reaches the plate rather than staying in the pan.
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