30 DAYS OPEN PURCHASEThere are kitchen tools you use, and then there are kitchen tools you take out just to hold them for a while. This ravioli stamp belongs to the second kind. The solid walnut handle is dark and densely grained, smooth as the neck of a well-played violin and shaped to fill your palm without you having to think about how to hold it. Beneath it sits a flower-shaped brass stamp with a warm, champagne-coloured finish that catches the light on the worktop. It weighs around 260 grams, and it's a weight you can feel. Not heavy, but enough to tell you this is built to last.
The clever part is inside. In the middle of the stamp is an anodised aluminium disc resting on a spring. When you press the stamp down over two pasta sheets with a dollop of filling in between, the disc meets the dough first and gently pushes the filling out evenly towards the edges, before the brass rim cuts through and seals. Release, and the spring pushes out your raviolo, finished and symmetrical, with soft petals all around. It's a small mechanical moment, a quiet click of precision, and it's hard not to want to do it again.
The shape is the flower, 5 cm in diameter, and the result is ravioli that look as if they come from a kitchen where someone has stood arranging things with tweezers. Fill them with ricotta and lemon zest, pumpkin and amaretti, or something as simple as potato and brown butter, and serve with a little sage. They're just as lovely as biscuits too, if you want to use the stamp for shortcrust and cookies.
The stamp is part of Marcato's Heritage range, where dark walnut and brass meet in kitchen tools inspired by the 20th-century Italian kitchen, and it's the kind of thing that makes an ordinary pasta project feel a little more special. It deserves a place on display, ideally next to the rolling pin and pasta machine, and it's more likely to be handed down than worn out. Marcato has been making kitchen tools in Campodarsego near Padua since 1930.
Makes flower-shaped ravioli, approx. 50 mm in diameter. Brass stamp with PVD finish, sprung disc in anodised aluminium, solid walnut handle. Height approx. 8.5 cm, weight approx. 260 g. Wipe clean with a cloth. Made in Italy.
