Casunzei

The second pasta course in our pasta tasting menu at Babbo (yes, it has been a long time since our last recap in this series) was "casunzei" with poppy seeds. The folks at Babbo have put this recipe online, which you can find here.


Casunzei is a ravioli dish, consisting of thin pasta wrapped around roasted beets, potatoes and ricotta cheese. The dish came with 3 large ravioli pieces. The sauce was a little creamy and the pasta was topped with scallions, poppy seeds and more ricotta. I really liked this ravioli dish; the combination of flavors was a little smoky and the texture of the pasta with the soft beet and cheese interior was nice. A thought the beets were understated and that the smokiness produced a flavor that was a little like bacon. Generally we thought this was really good.

The wine accompanying the casunzei course was "Baccabianca," Tenuta Grillo 2005. (Unfortunately we don't have a clear photo of the wine.) It was an orange color, which was different. It tasted a little woody and citrusy to us and A noted that swishing it around produced a peppercorn flavor.

I'm working off our notes on the meal (which, in my case, are not many) and it's not as fresh in my mind as it was last summer. (Just another lesson to myself about timely blogging!) But I do remember one thing distinctly about this course - I liked it. I liked it more than the one that came before it and the one that came after it. It wasn't my favorite pasta course but it was in the top half. I just wish I had blogged about it earlier!