For the pastry dough
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup white wine
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

For filling
1/4 cup jam
1/2 cup roasted almonds, finely chopped
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 tablespoons sugar

Vegetable oil for deep frying
Icing sugar for dusting or honey for brushing

Mix flour, sugar, white wine, vegetable oil and egg yolk and work into a stiff dough (If the flour mixture is too soft add more flour, if it's too hard, add more wine). Knead for about 5 minutes.

Divide the dough in half. Wrap each dough-ball in plastic wrap (or alternatively, place them in separate plastic bags) and then put them in containers. Cover the containers with napkins. Let the dough rest for an hour or so at room temperature.

Meanwhile, mix the cocoa powder with sugar, then add the chopped roasted almonds and jam (The resulting mixture should resemble a thick paste.).

After the dough has rested, cut out small portions (about 2 inches thick), flour them, and pass them through a pasta machine. The thickness of the dough (about 1/10 of an inch) should resemble a traditional "ravioli" noodle.). If you don't have a pasta maker, you can roll out the dough on a floured wooden board to the desired thickness (Of course, this will require a lot more effort and the consistency of the dough will not be as nice, as the pasta maker not only thins out the dough but kneads it at the same time.).

Using a cookie cutter with a 3 inch circumference make rounds (It's best to use a sharp knife and cut around the cookie cutter than attempt to press the dough out -- the rounds will come out much cleaner.)

Place a teaspoon or so of the jam and nut mixture in the center of each cut-out round and then fold over so that the resulting ravioli looks like a half circle.

To seal the ravioli, press the edges together using a fork (If the dough has hardened, one can brush the (inner!) edges of the rounds with milk or beaten egg yolk so that they'll stick together more easily.).

Deep fry the ravioli until they are golden on both sides.

Cool.

Sprinkle with icing sugar (or brush with warm-up honey) before serving.

Nowadays any bite-sized sweet pastry pocket in North America is called a "ravioli" but in Italy the names vary from town to town -- well, at least, they did prior to World War II. In some regions this recipe might also be called "Ravioli di San Giuseppe", but in other regions it might not. My dream is to collect the original regional recipes with their original names, but for now, that's just a dream. I simply can't do this on my own, as it's impossible to know when a so called traditional Italian recipe presented in a cookbook is really traditional or simply an adaption of one. Often, the adaptations are just as good or even better than the originals, but that's not the point of this website. This is a recipe archive, more than an on-line cookbook. The interesting thing (at least for me) is to find out how things were done in the past, rather than to come up with new recipes. As I'm dependent on "the kindness of strangers" for this food archive to grow and be useful, I am doing what I can to come up with representative recipes from both the North and South of Italy.... In any case, I know for sure that in Molise pastry pockets are not called "ravioli" but "fiodone," though one "ravioli" type of pastry is called "cauciuni." However, for "cauciuni" chick peas are used to make the stuffing rather than jam. Prior to World War II jam was in short supple. First of all, sugar was expensive. And second of all, few farmers had fruit trees on their property. And as most farmers only used the produce they themselves grew (Didn't go out and shop!) they simply concocted recipes that made use of what they had. Most farmers had vineyards, so they did make grape jam, but not that much of it (most of the grape collected was used to make wine). So, I guess, Italian cooks figured out how to make a good sweet paste without the use of fruit. Mashed up cooked chick peas sweetened with sugar, oddly enough, tastes very similar to jam.... One more thing, some cooks brush the fried pastry pockets with warmed-up honey rather than sprinkle them with icing sugar prior to serving. Apparently, prior to World War II, in some smaller Italian towns (like the one my mother grew up in), icing sugar was not available. Nonetheless, my mother nowadays dusts her fritters with icing sugar. Actually, she often divides the fritters in two portions -- half are coated with dusting sugar, the other half with honey. The point being -- in the kitchen one uses what one has. And if one has too much food, well then, one simply has to give some away. Why else would people have dinner parties? Photo: Mary Melfi.

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