Italian Smoked Ricotta Ravioli | Ravioli di Ricotta Affumicata, Melanzane e Pomodoro Bruciato
This is a Sicilian plate assembled from three things the island does better than anyone: ricotta salted and hung in the smoke until it turns hard and amber, eggplant fried in enough oil to taste of cream rather than of vegetable, and tomatoes blackened over a naked flame until the skins split. The ravioli are semola and water, the dough of the south, rolled thick enough to hold a sauce with grip in it.
The burnt tomato is the part that surprises people. Charring is not a restaurant trick here; it is what happens to tomatoes left on the edge of a wood fire, and the bitterness it produces is what the sweetness of fried eggplant needs. The smoked ricotta runs through both and ties the filling to the sauce.
Yield: 4 servings, about 9 ravioli each. Prep: 1 hour 20 minutes. Draining: overnight. Rest: 40 minutes. Cook: 45 minutes. Total: about 3 hours plus draining. Difficulty: intermediate to advanced. Course: primo piatto. Region: Sicily.
The Story
Ricotta affumicata is a survival product. Fresh ricotta lasts two days in a Sicilian summer, so shepherds in the Nebrodi and the Madonie salted the drained curd, pressed it into baskets and hung it in the chimney over a fire of almond shells, olive prunings or straw. Weeks later it came out a hard, pale amber cheese that grates like a pecorino and carries a distinct woodsmoke note. It is still sold by the wedge in every serious Sicilian market.
Eggplant reached Sicily with Arab agriculture and stayed. The island cooks it more ways than anywhere else in Italy, and the two constants are salt and generous oil: caponata, parmigiana, pasta alla Norma from Catania. Norma is the direct ancestor of this plate, pairing fried eggplant, tomato and salted ricotta over pasta, and the only real change here is that the cheese has moved inside the pasta.
Filled pasta belongs to Sicily too, though outsiders rarely associate the two. Ravioli di ricotta appear across the island in savoury and sweet forms, made with semola rather than the egg dough of the north, and around Ragusa they are dressed with pork sauce and a heavy grating of hard cheese. Burning the tomatoes is the oldest gesture of all: before gas, a tomato held near embers to loosen its skin picked up smoke, and southern cooks kept doing it long after they had a choice.
Ingredients
For the pasta dough
Semola rimacinata di grano duro, 2 1/4 cups (350 g)
Tipo 00 flour, 1/2 cup (70 g)
Warm water, about 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Egg yolks, 2
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
For the smoked ricotta filling
Sheep milk ricotta, drained overnight, 12 oz (340 g)
Ricotta affumicata, finely grated, 2 oz (55 g)
Pecorino Siciliano, finely grated, 1/4 cup (25 g)
Egg yolk, 1
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the burnt tomato sauce
Ripe datterino or San Marzano tomatoes, 1 lb 12 oz (800 g)
Garlic cloves, lightly crushed, 3
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Dried Sicilian oregano, 1/2 tsp (1 g)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
Granulated sugar, 1 tsp (4 g), only if the tomatoes need it
For the eggplant
Long violet eggplants, 1 lb 5 oz (600 g)
Coarse salt for purging, 1 tbsp (18 g)
Extra virgin olive oil for frying, about 1 1/2 cups (360 ml)
For finishing
Ricotta affumicata for grating at the table, 1 oz (30 g)
Basil leaves, small, 12
Extra virgin olive oil, a few drops per plate
Coarse salt for the pasta water, 3 tbsp (45 g) for 5 quarts (5 litres)
Preparation
Step 1
Drain the ricotta. Set it in a fine mesh sieve over a bowl, cover it and leave it in the refrigerator overnight. Sheep milk ricotta holds a lot of whey, and a filling built on undrained curd leaks into the pasta and bursts it in the pot. You want a curd that holds its shape under a spoon and releases nothing more.
Step 2
Make the semola dough. Mix the semola, the tipo 00 and the salt, then work in the yolks, the oil and most of the warm water. Semola drinks water slowly, so add the last of it a spoonful at a time. Knead 10 minutes until the surface goes from rough to smooth and faintly shiny, then wrap and rest it 40 minutes. Warm water matters: cold water leaves a semola dough stiff and unworkable.
Step 3
Char the tomatoes. Set them whole over a gas flame, under a very hot broiler or in a dry cast iron pan, turning until the skins blister, split and blacken in patches. You want perhaps a third of each surface actually black, not all of it. Cool them just enough to handle, then crush them by hand, skins and all. The blackened skin is the flavour and must not be peeled away.
Step 4
Build the sauce. Warm the oil with the crushed garlic in a wide pan over medium low heat until the garlic is pale gold, then lift the cloves out. Add the crushed charred tomatoes with their juices, the oregano and the salt, and simmer uncovered 25 to 30 minutes until the sauce pulls together and a spoon leaves a clean trail. Add the sugar only if the char has pushed the tomatoes towards bitterness.
Step 5
Salt the eggplant. Cut it into 1/2 inch (12 mm) cubes, toss with the coarse salt in a colander and leave 40 minutes under a weight. Rinse briefly and, more importantly, dry thoroughly in a cloth. Salting draws out water and collapses some of the spongy cell structure, so the cubes absorb far less oil and finish creamy instead of saturated.
Step 6
Fry the eggplant. Heat the oil to 340°F (170°C) and fry the cubes in small batches, turning, about 4 minutes each until deep golden and soft at the centre. Crowding the pan drops the temperature and gives grey, oil logged eggplant. Lift them onto absorbent paper, salt lightly while hot, and set aside a third for the garnish.
Step 7
Make the filling. Beat the drained ricotta smooth with a spatula, then fold in the grated ricotta affumicata, the pecorino, the yolk, the lemon zest, the salt and the pepper. Do not use a machine: whipped ricotta goes loose and will not hold a dome. Go slightly under on salt, since the cheeses and the sauce add more later. Refrigerate 30 minutes and load a piping bag.
Step 8
Roll and fill. Cut the dough in four and take each piece to the third thinnest setting, thicker than an egg pasta because semola dough is less extensible and the sauce needs something to hold on to. Pipe domes along the lower half, mist the exposed dough lightly, fold over, press the trapped air out from the base of each mound outwards, then cut and seal the rims with a fluted wheel.
Step 9
Cook and finish in the pan. Bring 5 quarts (5 litres) to a rolling boil, salt with 3 tablespoons (45 g) of coarse salt, then drop the heat to a bare simmer. Warm the sauce in a wide pan with two thirds of the eggplant. Cook the ravioli 4 to 5 minutes from the moment they rise, lift them with a spider into the sauce, add a ladle of starchy water and shake the pan over low heat for 30 seconds until the sauce clings.
Plating
Use warm, shallow, wide bowls, around 140°F (60°C). This is a hot plate with fried elements on it and it cools fast, unlike the delicate butter dishes of the north. Spoon a base of the burnt tomato sauce into each bowl and spread it with the back of the spoon rather than pouring it over the pasta, so the ravioli sit in the sauce and stay visible.
Arrange nine ravioli in a loose single layer, scatter the reserved fried eggplant cubes over and between them, and add a few small basil leaves. Grate the ricotta affumicata over the whole plate at the last moment, generously: it is the element that ties the filling to the sauce, and grated early it goes damp and loses its smoke. Finish with a few drops of raw olive oil and serve immediately, with the remaining cheese on the table.
Professional Technique
The defining technique is controlled charring. Burning the tomato skins produces pyrazines and phenols, the same class of compounds that make grilled food taste grilled, and they read on the palate as bitterness and smoke. At the right level they give a fresh tomato sauce depth it would otherwise need hours of reduction to reach; too heavily and they flatten everything. The rule is roughly one third blackened surface per tomato, skins left in.
The second technique is salting and frying eggplant properly. Raw eggplant is mostly air trapped in a spongy cell matrix, which is why it drinks oil so greedily. Salting draws water out by osmosis and partly collapses that matrix, so the cubes have fewer air pockets to fill. Frying at a steady 340°F (170°C) sets the exterior quickly and cooks the interior creamy without the oil soaking through.
The third is the use of two ricotte in one dish. The fresh drained curd supplies moisture and milky sweetness, the smoked pressed one supplies salt, umami and aroma, and neither works alone: fresh ricotta alone tastes bland against a charred sauce, smoked alone is dry and aggressive. Roughly six to one by weight holds them in balance.
Texture and Moisture Control
Water is the enemy at three points. The ricotta must be drained overnight or its whey weeps into the dough and splits the ravioli in the pot. The eggplant must be salted and dried thoroughly, because a wet cube dropped into hot oil steams instead of frying. The charred tomatoes must be reduced far enough that a spoon leaves a trail, or the sauce slides off the pasta.
Semola dough behaves differently from egg dough. Durum wheat is less extensible and more brittle, so it is rolled to the third thinnest setting rather than the second and needs 4 to 5 minutes rather than 3. That body is an advantage: a robust tomato and eggplant sauce would tear a delicate northern sheet, and the slight chew of a semola raviolo is part of what makes the dish Sicilian.
The final texture is built in the pan, not on the plate. A ladle of starchy cooking water shaken into the sauce with the ravioli emulsifies the olive oil into the tomato and gives a glossy coating that clings. Without it the oil separates into a bright ring at the edge of the bowl. Keep the heat low and the pan moving; the fried eggplant should warm through, not fry again.
Professional Mise en Place
This dish spreads across two days but the second is short. Sauce and eggplant both improve with a few hours of rest, which makes it friendly to a dinner party.
Equipment and tools
Pasta machine, fine mesh sieve, piping bag with a plain nozzle
Gas burner, broiler or a heavy cast iron pan for charring
Deep frying pan and a thermometer
Wide sauté pan for finishing the ravioli
Spider skimmer, fluted pasta wheel, microplane for the hard ricotta
Prepared ahead
Ricotta draining in the refrigerator, overnight
Burnt tomato sauce, up to 3 days ahead, refrigerated
Eggplant fried and drained, up to 1 day ahead, kept at room temperature
Filling made and bagged, up to 1 day ahead
Ravioli formed and frozen flat on a semola dusted tray, up to 3 weeks
Service setup
Water at a bare simmer, well salted, ladle within reach
Sauce warm in a wide pan with two thirds of the eggplant already in it
Reserved eggplant, basil and the wedge of ricotta affumicata beside the pass
Bowls warm, around 140°F (60°C)
Grate the hard ricotta only as the plates go out
Chef Tips
Buy the ricotta affumicata whole and grate it yourself. Pre grated hard ricotta is dried out and has lost the volatile smoke compounds that are the whole point of the cheese. A wedge keeps wrapped in paper for weeks and improves as it firms.
Taste a tomato before you char it. Watery supermarket tomatoes will not survive the treatment, because charring concentrates whatever flavour is already present and adds nothing of its own. If the fruit is poor, use good quality tinned datterini and char them briefly in a dry pan instead.
Fry the eggplant in olive oil, not seed oil. It is the expensive choice and the difference between a Sicilian plate and a generic one, because the oil clings to the cubes and carries its own peppery bitterness into the dish. Strain it afterwards and keep it for vegetables.
Go under on salt in the filling and correct at the table. Between the pecorino, the smoked ricotta, the salted sauce and the final grating, this dish accumulates salt from four directions, and a filling seasoned to taste on its own will read as too salty once assembled.
Common Mistakes
Using undrained ricotta. Fresh sheep milk ricotta is full of whey, and a filling built on it leaks into the dough and bursts the ravioli in the water. Drain it in a sieve overnight, never squeeze it in a cloth.
Peeling the charred tomatoes. The blackened skin is where the smoke and the bitterness live, and removing it leaves an ordinary fresh tomato sauce. Crush the tomatoes whole, skins included, and let the sauce carry the flecks.
Charring the tomatoes all over. Completely blackened skins turn the sauce acrid and grey, and no amount of sugar rescues it. Aim for roughly a third of each surface, and stop while the tomato is still mostly red.
Crowding the eggplant in the pan. Too many cubes drop the oil temperature, and eggplant frying below 300°F (150°C) absorbs oil instead of sealing. Work in small batches and let the oil come back up.
Whipping the filling in a machine. A food processor turns ricotta into a loose, slightly grainy cream that will not hold a dome under the piping bag. Beat it by hand with a spatula and stop as soon as it is smooth.
Wine Pairing
Etna Rosso DOC: The closest thing to a perfect answer. Nerello Mascalese grown on volcanic ash gives a pale, smoky red with sour cherry fruit and a fine ash note on the finish that meets the charred tomato directly. Its acidity handles the fried eggplant, and the tannin is fine enough not to fight the ricotta.
Etna Bianco DOC: The white of the same terroir, and the choice if you want the smoked cheese to lead. Carricante is sharply acidic with a flinty, almost saline character and a green apple core, cutting the oil of the fried eggplant without adding sweetness that would clash with the char.
Cerasuolo di Vittoria DOCG: From the south east of the island, built for this kind of cooking. The Frappato brings bright red berry lift and low tannin, the Nero d Avola body and a touch of Mediterranean herb. Served lightly chilled at 57°F (14°C) it refreshes the palate between mouthfuls of fried eggplant.
Grillo Sicilia DOC: The everyday Sicilian white and a reliable match. It carries more weight than most island whites, with citrus peel, a faint herbal bitterness and good acidity, so it holds the fat of the filling while that bitter edge runs alongside the char.
Fiano di Avellino DOCG: The mainland option, from Campania, and the most textural white here. Its smoky, nutty, pear character echoes the smoked ricotta almost note for note, and the firm acidic spine keeps a rich plate from settling. Serve at 54°F (12°C).
Storage & Reheating
The burnt tomato sauce keeps refrigerated in a sealed container for 3 days and freezes for 3 months, and it is better on the second day once the char has settled into the fruit. Rewarm it gently and loosen it with a spoonful of water if it has tightened. Fried eggplant keeps at cool room temperature for a day, loosely covered so it does not sweat; refrigerating it makes it soggy.
Uncooked ravioli freeze better than they refrigerate. Set them in a single layer on a semola dusted tray, freeze until solid, then bag them for up to 3 weeks and cook them straight from frozen with 1 extra minute. Raw ravioli left in the refrigerator for more than a few hours take up moisture from the filling and stick to the tray.
Cooked and sauced ravioli hold overnight better than most filled pasta, because a semola sheet is sturdier than an egg one. Refrigerate them in their sauce for up to 2 days and rewarm in a covered pan over low heat with 2 tablespoons of water, shaking rather than stirring. Never microwave them and never boil them twice. Grate fresh ricotta affumicata over them at the end.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings of about 9 ravioli each:
Calories: 760 kcal
Total Fat: 41 g
Saturated Fat: 13 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 26 g
Cholesterol: 120 mg
Sodium: 1050 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 74 g
Fiber: 8 g
Total Sugars: 12 g
Added Sugars: 1 g
Protein: 27 g
Lactose: 3.5 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium, lycopene, folate
These figures are estimates. The fat figure depends heavily on how much frying oil the eggplant actually retains, which good salting and a steady temperature reduce considerably.
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