Ravioli with braised beef are a typical pasta dish of the oltrepò pavese and especially of the area of Zavattarello and Varzi. Although it requires quite long preparation, given the prolonged baking of the meat, it is definitely a tasty and rich dish. Today we will see a variation famous especially in Varzi, the one prepared using Bonarda wine for brazing.
For pasta
For the filling and the sauce
Let's begin by browning, in a quite large casserole, the beef with oil and butter. We add cloves cinnamon, laurel, the rest of the vegetables cut into pieces, salt and cover it all with bonarda. Let's cook for an hour and a half on a slow fire.
After removing the cooking jouice, which we will filter to prepare the sauce, we'll mince everything with a kitchen robot adding the egg, grated cheese and the bread crumb. Let's mix everything until we get a homogeneous mince.
Let's start making the pasta dough by placing flour, eggs, a pinch of salt and a glass of water on a planter. We knead with our hands for 15 minutes until we get a smooth and rather firm dough that we will lay with a rolling pin to get a thin sheet.
On half of the sheet we place, at a regular distance of about 1 inch, the filling balls and we cover with the other half of the sheet. We squash with the fingers to seal the ravioli and cut them with a toothed wheel.
Cook the ravioli for 10 minutes in salted water and, once drained, let's stir them in a frying pan with the filtered cooking juice and adding the grana padano cheese before serving.