Cafe Renee Escargot Ravioli Recipe

Cafe Renée is a lively and social brasserie, and the latest Toronto restaurant offering from Chef Nick Liu. Renée boasts a well rounded selection of old and new world wines, champagnes, and a large cocktail menu. The menu is French/Italian, with a focus on French inspired pastas including this delicious Escargot Ravioli.

If you want to attempt Escargot Ravioli at home, Chef Nick provided step by step instructions including tips and notes so that you can wow guests at your next dinner party. If you are planning on serving Escargot Ravioli, add a touch of French flair with a high-quality Staub escargot dish. The black snail pan has a diameter of 14cm, is made of solid cast iron, and is oven safe up to 900F/482C. The dish has a slightly raised edge making is easy to cover the Escargot Ravioli with the melted butter and cheese that this recipe calls for.

Pasta

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 eggs

3 egg yolks

Drizzle extra virgin olive oil

Pinch salt

Escargot

12pc escargot from France, rinsed

1/2 cup butter

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped

12 small button mushrooms

Method

Combine pasta ingredients to an electric mixer with the flat beater attachment and mix ingredients slowly until it starts to come together in a ball. Stop machine and remove the beater attachment.

Tip: Feel the dough, if it feels dry add some water or if it feels wet add a dusting of flour.

Attach the dough hook and turn mixer on slow for 3-5 minutes. Remove the dough from mixing bowl and knead on a clean table surface for 2 minutes. Place dough in a Ziplock bag and rest until needed.

Melt butter in a small sauce pan over high heat with crushed garlic until the butter is melted and the butter starts to foam. Add mushrooms, lemon juice and fish sauce and take off heat. Mix well until slightly cooled, still warm. Add escargots and parsley to the butter  and coat well, let sit for 5 minutes and transfer the escargots onto paper towel. Allow to cool.

Note: Before you begin, set up your workstation. Find a large space to spread out and clean your table surface, the pasta sheets are going to be long! Attach pasta rolling machine to your table and dust your work surface with extra flour to prevent sticking.

Cut the pasta dough into four equal pieces. Work with one piece at a time and keep the other pieces of pasta dough in the Ziplock bag to prevent drying.

Roll pasta out a few times starting from the widest setting and adjust the setting to one size thinner each time until you reach #2 thin setting.

Tip: Folding the pasta sheets and re-rolling from the start to laminate your pasta is important. I do this at least 3 times before thinning it out to my desired thickness.

After rolling all 4 dough pieces into sheets, lay 2 sheets flat on the table and place six whole pieces of escargot down evenly spaced about 2 fingers width apart. Place another pasta sheet on top like making a sandwich. Smooth the pasta sheet with your fingertips, working around the filling to get the air bubbles out, then cut with a ring cutter. The ring cutter should be about 1/4 inch larger on all sides of the filling, and press to seal the edges and sides.

Note: At Cafe Renee we use a bacon garlic and onion purée mixed in with each escargot. This is pretty advanced so I omitted it from this recipe.

Reheat your mushroom butter mix on low heat. Plunge the raviolis into a pot of generously salted boiling water. Cook for 3-6 minutes. Remove ravioli from boiling water and transfer to mushroom butter pan. Toss well to coat the raviolis in  the butter mix.