Meatball-Tortellini



A nice find on the cover of Food Network Magazine, this batch is quick, 35 mins active, very hardy,

and plenty good for you if you want it to be – maybe our favorite so far from the winter Quarry Lane soup of the day quest.  It was fun looking into tortellini some after making this recipe.  Tortellini, an

Italian invention, is nicknamed the "belly button" pasta for its shape and color.  Made by hand, cooks roll out a giant swatch of thin pasta, then cut it with a multi-head sharp roller

in order to create a grid pattern of rectangular pasta segments.  On a cold and blustery night in the midwest, it's fun to think about the small pasta shop

from the name brand of the box of tortellini above.  The pastas available to take home to your Bolognese villa to experiment with must be downright fun.

You can puree just about anything you want to stuff in it – spinach, squash, chicken, sausage – then add a little dollop in each rectangle, pick it up, fold it to a triangle, then wrap the two bottom ends around your finger, and you have what looks like a complicated noodle but is not.  The only refrigerated tortellini we had available at the store was chicken and herb, which happened to work well with the chicken broth (broth a must according to the Italian palate!).  The soup also calls for meatballs, one inch rounds made of your choice of meat, chopped garlic and egg for glue.  Carrots and spinach are asked for, but because we are on a kale kick, I substituted for the green superfood, kale, and it softened nicely in the chicken broth. I think I heard the faint murmur from children that we should eat it more often.