Tart London: how to make avocado and pea ravioli

We came up with this recipe for a recent dinner that we cooked in a beautiful old townhouse in Pimlico. That area of London is so amazing — the streets feel so old and the Georgian and Victorian architecture is wonderful. It is not an area we often visit and we had to sneak off for a walk so that we could have a good old nosy through the windows of all the houses nearby.

We had originally planned to cook these ricotta and tarragon ravioli with saffron butter from our cookbook, A Love of Eating, but we had to come up with this dairy-free option for lactose-intolerant guests. If you can eat dairy, do give this a good shower of Parmesan to serve; if not, try smoking or roasting some tomatoes for salty, savoury depth.

Ingredients - serves 4

For the pasta

4 large free-range eggs

400g type ‘00’ flour

Sea salt

For the filling

1 bulb of garlic

250g peas, defrosted if frozen

1 large avocado

50g pine nuts

Bunch of basil

2 tbsp olive oil

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Sea salt and black pepper

To serve

Parmesan, finely grated

Handful of rocket

Method

First make the pasta. Whizz all the ingredients together in a food processor or, if making by hand, combine into a dough on a flour-dusted surface. Knead for about 10 minutes until the dough becomes smooth and glossy. Roll into a ball, wrap in cling film and set aside for 30 minutes.

Now make the filling. Heat oven to 200C. Roast garlic for about 20 minutes until the skin starts to burst. Cool then squeeze the cloves out of their cases and whizz in a food processor with the other ingredients to a mostly smooth texture.

Cut the dough into 4 pieces. Work one piece through the pasta machine on its widest setting. Repeat a few times, occasionally folding in half. Take the machine down to the second widest setting and keep rolling the dough through. Continue adjusting until you have rolled the dough through its narrowest setting. Cut in half, as it will be too long to manage now. Repeat with the remaining three balls.

Stamp out rounds using a 6cm biscuit cutter from the pasta sheets. Place a teaspoon of avocado mixture in the middle of each round, dampen the edges of the dough with water and sandwich another round on top. Use your fingertip to seal edges, expelling all the air as you go. Cook the ravioli in a large pan of gently boiling salted water for 4-5 minutes. Drain and serve with a drizzle of olive oil, Parmesan and torn rocket.