Along with acquacotta and wild boar in any which way, this is the southern Maremma’s most famed dish. Tortelli are square ravioli and not to be confused with tortellini, Emilia-Romagna’s little belly-button-shaped filled pasta. Maremma’s tortelli tend to be larger than anyone else’s and have a thick border around the filling, charmingly called il marciapiede (the footpath) or la frangia (the fringe), usually cut out with a ruffled-edge pastry cutter that make the edges of every square of pasta good for trapping sauce. Because of their size, the pasta for these tortelli is a little thicker than normal. This also makes them sturdy enough for a robust sauce.
The filling is local sheep’s milk ricotta – which is firm and creamy, and has a sweet milky taste with a slight tang – speckled with blanched and finely chopped English spinach. The spinach sometimes changes seasonally with other greens such as silverbeet (Swiss chard), or even the leaves of stinging nettles or beetroot (beets). They’re usually topped with a heaping serve of rich Sugo Maremmano, as Maremman-style ragu is called, or simply with just-melted unsalted butter and sage.
The question of how many portions this makes all comes down to how you’re serving these. Fresh pasta is often used on special occasions, which also means you’re serving antipasto before and a main after this dish (if the host is anything like my mother-in-law, then it’s quite possible there will even be two different pasta dishes). It’s highly probable there’ll be dessert too, and coffee and biscuits and digestivi to finish. If this were the case, then this recipe would be plenty for eight people. If this is the only dish being served and those eating it are ravenous teenagers, then it would feed four. For anything in between, I would say you could serve six with this.