A DISH INSPIRED BY A GRAND CHEF: MUSSEL AND HERB CREAM RAVIOLES BY JEAN SULPICE

Mussel and herb cream ravioles
This is a recipe inspired by a young and very talented French chef, Jean Sulpice in Annecy (remember this name, he is probably the tomorrow's Paul Bocuse or Joël Robuchon). In fact his recipe is made with snails (escargots), but as I didn't have snails, I tested with mussels. The test was more than positive.
First of all, I used on purpose the French word for ravioli, "ravioles". Well, the term might be a bit confusing as it designates either a small size (1/2") square ravioli, like the ravioles of Romans (a city of the Rhône valley), or a big and unique ravioli, of various shapes, but generally round. Here, the ravioles have a "normal" size, but they are made a bit differently: around 50% of egg yolk and 50% of flour. I should say that this dough is very easy to handle and to work with. The proof: this is the first time that I was able to use the thinner setting of my Imperia pasta maker without using additional, or hardly, flour to laminate the raviole sheets.

Second, I made a herb cream, using our garden grown or wild herbs: cilantro, chive, mint (for its bite), sorrel (for its acidity), purslane (for its sweetness), each in about the same quantity, plus some leaves of a dandelion (for their bitterness). Then I mix half a glass of hot liquid cream with a tiny bit of agar agar (Sulpice uses gelatin, but a moderate quantity of agar agar works well too, the purpose being not to gel the cream, but just to firm it up, like a crème anglaise -see picture- so that it is easy to place in the raviole) in the blender (Vitamix) to make a smooth cream, a few drops of white balsamic vinegar to enhance all those herb taste. The result was a fabulous and flavorful cream.

Third, very classically, I cooked mussels with butter, shallots and white wine, till they just opened, and I kept the broth.

Fourth, I assemble the whole, the ravioli sheet, a teaspoon of herb cream, a mussel, and forming square raviolis with a pastry crimper/sealer (Sulpice makes "plins", a more sophisticated shape... this will be for next time!).

Fifth, one minute in boiling water, in fact no, I didn't use boiling water, but the mussel cooking juice, enriched by the remaining herb cream to leverage all those tastes, and completed with the ncessary quantity of water (I just kept one ladle of this juice, mixed with butter, to serve as a sauce), et voilà.

Served with a "green" sauce (see above), a few mussels and a few chopped herbs... 

Those ravioles were just ravishing!

GALLERY





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