Fish Ravioli

Let's see if I remember how I made these ... these are fish-filled ravioli. The filling is made by sauteing some shallots then adding some cod in small chunks passed through flower, salt pepper, brandy and white wine. Had some sourdough bread that I put in, in small pieces, to soak up any of the excess liquid. That's it I think. One of the recipes I had look at for inspiration said to put all this in a blender, I didn't, I prefer a chunkier texture, and in any case once you start mixing it breaks up into almost a paste. I think you can put any fish you like, shrimp, swordfish, tuna ...

The pasta, my eternal conundrum about ravioli, if I use the #5 setting in the pasta machine it's too thick, if I use the #6 it's too thin ... and when it is thin you need to have a very strong pasta, which I didn't have the other day, so I had to go with the thick option... will try again next time, but they taste very good anyway.

The sauce, the story behind this is that, low and behold, incredibly, after a recent dinner I realized that there was half a bottle of champagne left over ! Had to run to the airport the next morning, no time for mimosas, corked it and put it in the fridge. All the meanwhile during my travels across Italy visiting relatives I wondered about that precious champagne in my fridge and how I could use it for cooking up something fancy. The first thing that came up to mind was a spuma di gamberi allo champagne, which is like a shrimp-flavoured mousse... found a possible recipe for a sweet champagne mousse for dessert, but in the end I went for the scallop champagne cream sauce for the ravioli. There are various versions on the internet. I tried the one where you sauté the shallots and some mushrooms, take them out of the pan, add in the (frozen) scallops, once they are thawed and lost most of their water put back the mushrooms and then add the champagne. Low heat 10 mins, (be careful with the scallops, it's better if they don't overcook if possible) take out scallops and mushrooms and let the sauce reduce to half. Add cream and one or two egg yolks. Now, this last step, with the egg yolks, I don't think it came out exactly right, maybe it would have been better to mix the cream and yolks before adding them to the sauce. In any case, the friends said it tasted very good ! (I have very nice friends :-)  )