Tortellini in Brodo: Bologna's Pasta Shaped Like Venus's Navel

In Bologna, there is a legend. One night, the goddess Venus and Jupiter stopped at an inn near Castelfranco Emilia. The innkeeper, unable to resist his curiosity, peered through the keyhole of Venus's room and glimpsed her navel. So enchanted was he by its beauty that he rushed to the kitchen and shaped a pasta in its image. The tortellino was born. The legend is almost certainly invented — but it perfectly captures the spirit of Emilian food culture: sensual, abundant, shaped with love, consumed with joy.

The earliest documented recipe for tortellini appears in a 14th century text, though the current form of the dish was codified much later. In 1974, the Italian Academy of Cuisine officially registered the authentic recipe for tortellini with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce — one of the few dishes in the world whose recipe is legally protected. The filing specifies the exact dimensions (diameter of the disk: 7 cm), the exact ingredients for the filling (mortadella, prosciutto di Parma, pork loin, parmigiano, and nutmeg), and the broth in which they must be served: a capon broth, ideally. Tortellini, in Bologna, are inseparable from their broth. Eating them with cream sauce — as is done in restaurants across the world — is considered, in Emilia-Romagna, a form of barbarity.

The folding technique is the part that requires practice. A tortellino begins as a 7cm square of fresh egg pasta — the sfoglia — with a small amount of filling at its center. You fold the square diagonally to form a triangle, pressing the edges to seal. Then you wrap the triangle around your index finger, bringing the two corners of the long base together and pressing them to overlap. The result is a small ring with a frilled edge on the outside and a hollow in the center where the filling sits. When they float in a rich golden broth, the filled pasta absorbs some of the liquid and becomes more tender; the broth takes on some of the flavor of the filling. The two elements improve each other. A Bolognese grandmother can fold a hundred in an hour without thinking. Beginners should expect an hour for twenty.

The broth is not secondary. In tortellini in brodo, the broth is half the dish, and a poor broth means a disappointing result no matter how perfect the tortellini. The traditional Bolognese broth uses capon (cappone) — a castrated rooster, slower-grown and more flavorful than an ordinary chicken — along with a piece of beef (often the doppione, the double brisket), a piece of cotenna (pork rind) for gelatin, and the classic soffritto vegetables. The broth cooks for a minimum of three hours, then is strained and defatted. When it is finished, it should be golden, clear, and intensely flavored. It should tremble slightly when you shake the pot — that trembling is the gelatin from the bones, which gives the broth its body and depth.