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Nettle ravioli with squirrel and wild mushroom filling and tomato and dulse sauce

Fergus Drennan from Great Food Live
Go wild with Fergus Drennan, who turns the bounty of the British countryside into an Italian-inspired feast

Nettle ravioli with squirrel and wild mushroom filling and tomato and dulse sauce

Method

1. To make the sauce, put the tomatoes in a large saucepan over a medium-low heat and cook gently for about 2 hours to make a thick, pulpy sauce.

2. Meanwhile, cook the squirrel. Put it in a large pan, cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for 45-60 minutes or until done.

3. While the sauce and squirrel are cooking, make the pasta dough. In a blender or food processor blend the nettle tops to give a smooth thin paste. Put the flour in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the eggs, salt and nettle purée and mix well to give a green dough. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead thoroughly until smooth. Set aside.

4. Remove the tomato sauce from the heat when done and season with salt and black pepper. Allow it to cool briefly before liquidizing it (in batches if necessary) using a blender. Return to the saucepan and set aside.

5. When the squirrel has finished cooking and is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the bone and combine with the other filling ingredients. Add some seasoning to taste then transfer the mixture to a food processor and blend briefly.

6. Heat a frying pan with a little olive oil and fry the squirrel mixture for about 2 minutes, then set aside to cool.

7. Halve the pasta dough then roll each piece out into a thin sheet just a few millimeters thick. Cut out discs or squares about 4cm wide, or use a ravioli tray to shape the dough into parcels. Put about 2 teaspoons of filling on top of half of the cut pasta. Brush the extra beaten egg around the edges and top with the remaining cut pasta, pressing down around the outside to make parcels. Try to make sure that there is no air inside the parcel and seal the edges well with a fork.

8. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the ravioli for approximately 4 minutes. Drain and set aside.

9. Meanwhile, reheat the tomato sauce, adding the roughly chopped dulse. Simmer for about 3 minutes.

10. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and shallow-fry the wild garlic fopr 2 minutes. Add the scarlet elfcup mushrooms and fry for another minute.

11. Ladle the hot sauce onto serving dishes. Put the ravioli parcels on top and garnish with the scarlet elfcup mushrooms and wild garlic. Sprinkle with cheese and serve hot.

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Serves: 8

Prep: 1 hr 50 min
Cook: 2 hrs 20 min

Ingredients

For the sauce

1kg Tomatoes, chopped
2 strips dulse seaweed, roughly chopped

For the filling

200g mixed wild winter greens, such as seabeet, charlock, bristly ox tongue, sow thistle, and chervil, roughly chopped
1 onion, roughly chopped
Olive oil, for frying
1 squirrel, skinned and gutted
100g field blewits, roughly chopped
30g jelly ear fungus, roughly chopped