Recipe Time: the famous Pear Ravioli

If you've kept up with my blog for a while, you'll be aware that my all-time favorite restaurant in Florence is Coquinarius, a small restaurant that barely anyone has ever even heard about. Absolutely everything that I've ever eaten there has been delicious and so authentic, but the dish that the restaurant is best known for is its pear ravioli. A more popular restaurant called La Giostra has a similar dish, but I've tried both and think Coquinarius does it better. 

After having the ravioli a few times (and quickly draining my wallet of its precious euros in the process) I decided I needed to learn how to make this masterpiece of a dish. So I found a recipe and made it from scratch. Boy, was it worth it. It came out absolutely amazing. The perfect amount of sweet and savory. Just divine.

So I'm passing along the recipe for my readers to try. It's actually really easy to make... the hardest part is making the fresh pasta, but you can always just grab some pre-made dough from the store and the rest will take less than twenty minutes.

Pear Ravioli 

Serves 4

What you'll need:

3 Pears (the recipes that I've found have told me that pears that are not too ripe work best. To be honest, I have no idea what a ripe pear looks like, and my rav came out fine.)

8 oz of Pecorino cheese

1/4 cup Mascarpone cheese

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup of butter

Extra Pecorino to sprinkle on top of the finished ravioli

First, grate the pecorino cheese and the pears. 

Then combine the pecorino, mascarpone, pears, and egg yolk all together for the ravioli filling.

My friend Monique made the fresh pasta since she had just learned how to in her cooking class. I've taken a class on how to make fresh pasta as well, but I let her take the reins on this part of the recipe...

Here's a tutorial on how to make your own pasta.

After you've rolled out your dough with a rolling pin (or with a wine bottle, like we did, since we didn't have one available), cut it into pieces -- as big as you want your ravioli to be. 

Use a spoon to put the pear and cheese mixture onto one piece of pasta, place another on top of it, and use a fork to seal the pieces together, just like we did (see above photo).

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the raviolis for 3-4 minutes, a few raviolis at a time.

While the raviolis are cooking, heat up the butter in a skillet. Once all of the raviolis are all done, pour the butter over the top of them and serve! 

Leave the rest of the grated pecorino on the table so that you can top your dish with it.

The couple of times that I've made this recipe its gotten rave reviews. If you're ever in Florence, I recommend trying the real deal at Coquinarius, but if you don't plan on being there anytime soon. definitely give this dish a try.