Giuseppe Rana pasta is found in most Italian supermarkets, so if Italian shoppers trust him, it is probably a safe bet we can too. Costco offers various raviolis that are a regular presence in our diet, usually with ani's simple mascarpone based ravioli sauce, but finally bob decided to give his four cheese-filled tortellini a try, with some already prepared salmon for three. Rana means frog in Italian, but somehow Joe Frog is not the way it sounds in Italian. Usually tortellini are served in some kind of broth in Italy, but we settled on a simple garlic butter sauce with some dried basil and it was quick and delicious. A very large plastic container of spinach leaves cooked down to barely enough for three diners, but was a nice healthy accompaniment to our carb and fish meal components. In Italy lunch portions of spinach "ripassato in padella" (sautéed in a pan, usually with olive oil and garlic, maybe red pepper flakes) are almost equivalent to an entire US family portion, but that is another story. Mediterranean diet stuff. As for the fish, bob felt like a traitor to his small business fish monger, who by chance was also shopping in Costco when this meal started taking shape in our planning activities. First time we met outside his family fish shop. Coincidence? So a Google search turned up a simple recipe, but with chicken broth. Ani vetoed that in favor of the simple butter garlic sauce with parmigiano, pepper, dried basil finishing it off.
"Tortellini in brodo" seems to be the traditional way of serving these guys, "in broth", but you don't want to just break open a can or carton of broth if you go this route. It pays to investigate how to do a better job, which makes this more labor intensive.
We asked our Italian Facebook friends for feedback. Only one volunteered: "terrificante! Aiuto!!" (terrifying! Help!!) and would not elaborate on his disgust.
Well, we liked it and in this case at least, we are not food snobs.