Yes, I did publish a ravioli recipe last week, but today it is time for the sequel! Once I published pumpkin and vegan ricotta ravioli last Friday, all hell broke loose. I got inundated with questions about how to make the same dish but without gluten.
The beauty of running a blog is that it allows you to respond to your audience pretty immediately, so as you guys were writing to me on Facebook, I quickly did an audit of my gluten-free flours and contacted my supplier asking if they have xanthan gum (you cannot do without it I’m afraid) in stock. I was in luck!
As soon I got my hands on it, I got to work on the dough. It came together pretty easily and I was pleasantly surprised by its pasta-like texture. When I asked Duncan to taste test it he said he would have trouble telling this gluten-free ravioli dough apart from the one made with wheat flour.
Although less elastic than the gluten dough and slightly less easy to work with (making it a day ahead helps with this), it is certainly possible to achieve delicate, see-through ravioli out of this gluten-free dough. So go for gold and roll this baby out as thinly as you can. If you get it right, your gluten-free guests will be convinced you simply got them at some fancy Italian deli in town 😉 .
For vegan ravioli made with wheat flour, see THIS RECIPE.
GLUTEN-FREE PASTA* (for non GF dough see THIS RECIPE)
- 115 g / ¾ cup rice flour (brown rice flour is fine too)
- 90 g / ¾ cup buckwheat flour
- 60 g / ½ cup tapioca starch
- 2 tsp xanthan gum
- ¼ tsp turmeric
- 2 tbsp / 30 ml olive oil
- ½ cup + 2 tbsp / 150 ml reduced aquafaba, (see NOTES)
FILLING
- 250 g / 0.5 lb raw beetroots
- 110 g / 1 cup walnut pieces
- 1 head of garlic
- 1-2 tbsp lemon juice, more to taste
- ½ tsp dry rosemary, pounded to powder in pestle & mortar
- approx. 1 tsp salt
- black pepper, to taste
- between ½-1 cup GF breadcrumbs OR GF ground crackers
FOR SERVING (optional)
- rosemary salt**
- 1-2 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
- a drizzle of walnut OR extra virgin olive oil
- 1 lemon, zest
- handful of pine nuts, toasted
- Heat up the oven to 200° C / 390° F. Wash the beetroots and wrap them in a big piece of kitchen foil adding a few tablespoons of water to the bottom of the parcel. Cut the top of the garlic head off, drizzle the exposed garlic cloves with a bit of olive oil and wrap in a separate piece of kitchen foil. Place both beetroots and garlic in the pre-heated oven. Bake the garlic head for about 35-40 mins and beetroots until tender (depending on their size it can take between 60 and 90 mins).
- Once beetroots are cool enough to handle, peel them with your fingers and chop roughly.
- Toast walnut pieces on a dry frying pan until lightly browned and fragrant.
- If using crackers to thicken the filling, pop them in the food processor and grind finely. Remove from the food processor and set aside.
- Place toasted walnuts in a food processor and process until you get a fine crumb. Add peeled and roughly chopped beetroot, add squeezed out roasted garlic cloves (I used the entire head, but adjust to taste) and process until you get a fine paste. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice and rosemary.
- Thicken the filling with breadcrumbs or ground up crackers and adjust seasoning. Basically, you don’t want the filling too wet as it will be difficult to work with.
DOUGH
- In a mixing bowl, combine both flours, tapioca starch, xanthan gum and turmeric. Add olive oil and rub it into the dry ingredients with your fingers. Mix aquafaba in and start kneading. To begin with, it may look seem like the dough needs more moisture but hold off without adding any more – the dough should become the right consistency after a little bit of kneading. Rest it for 30 mins or so.
- Roll the dough out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface. Roll it out as thin as you can (2-3 mm) – the thinner the dough the tastier the ravioli.
- Use a 5 cm / 2″ cookie cutter or an upside down glass to cut out circles of the dough. Place about a teaspoon of filling on half of the cut out circles. Place another circle on top and drape it around the filling, taking care not to trap any air pockets inside. Seal the two circles of dough with your fingers. If you want them to look like mine, go around each raviolo and crimp the sealed edges with the end of a fork. Put the finished dumplings on a tray dusted with rice flour and cover them with a kitchen towel while making the rest so that they don’t dry out. Continue in the same way until you have used up all the dough and / or all the filling.
- Bring a medium pot of water to boil. Once the water boils, place 5-6 ravioli (it’s important not to overcrowd the pot) in the boiling water and cook, on a rolling boil, for about 5 minutes. After the time is up, fish cooked ravioli out with a slotted spoon, shaking excess water off gently, and place them on a plate. Cook all the remaining ravioli in this way.
- To serve, sauté 2 cloves of garlic in a bit of olive oil. Baste the ravioli in the garlic oil gently. Serve with a sprinkling of rosemary salt, lemon zest and some toasted pine nuts.
*I found that it is best to make this dough a day ahead and keep it in the fridge overnight. It makes it easier to work with and you’ll be able to roll it thinner with less effort.
**To make rosemary salt, pound a good pinch of coarse sea salt with a pinch of dried rosemary in a pestle and mortar until you get a fine powder. Et voilà !