Slow Cooker Tortellini Soup

Dante Alighieri died in Ravenna in September 1321, and the great city of Bologna — where he had spent time in exile and which features prominently in the Commedia — held a memorial feast in his honor that autumn. The Bolognese archives record that the feast centrepiece was tortellini in broth: the small folded pasta that Bologna had been making since at least the twelfth century, simmered in the rich capon broth that was the city's culinary pride. The legend of the tortellini's origin is characteristically Bolognese — it was supposedly inspired by the navel of Venus, glimpsed through a keyhole by a lovestruck innkeeper who immortalized its shape in pasta dough. Whether or not Venus was involved, the tortellini represents one of the most precisely engineered foods in culinary history: each fold calculated to trap exactly the right amount of filling, the sealed edge thick enough to withstand simmering without rupturing, the pasta thin enough to cook through in minutes. The slow cooker version builds a broth of genuine depth over hours, then adds the tortellini only at the end — honoring the Bolognese principle that the pasta itself should be treated with respect, cooked briefly and served immediately, never allowed to sit and swell in liquid until it loses its form.