All about Ravioli

So I had a yen, the other day, to make ravioli. It's not too, hard, but I don't have a pasta machine or anything, so it was very "labour intensive", as it were.

First step, make the dough, (flour, water, olive oil, eggs, salt)

Knead dough. Then roll it into a ball, and wrap it in wax paper, or cling film,  and leave it in the fridge for an hour.

In the meantime, get working on your stuffing. Mine was caramelized red onions, with dried porcini mushrooms, that I had let soak in boiling water, along with some spinach, cranberry goat’s cheese, and crushed whole hazelnuts. I also added fresh lime juice. In a word: yum!

Then, for me, until I found a youtube video of chef Mario Battali on Martha Stewart, making ravioli, I was really having a difficult time figuring out how to stuff/ tuck everything in. My first batch looked like a cross between wontons, and little monster explosions. My ensuing batches looked better, thanks to ol’ Mario who had a pretty nifty trick for getting the top layer and bottom layer of dough to stick together.

First, he laid out his two sheets of dough, and instead of slabbing on his filling, as I had done first, he just put down a few wee dollops , then added the top sheet, and made partitions with his hand. Then he started to stick the dough together, with his fingers. Then, this is the cool part, he took a cookie cutter, and just pushed it into the top sheet of dough, over his covered dollop of filling, and worked it through until he had a totally contained, round raviolo!

Easy!

After that, here are the rest of the steps:

1)   Place a few ravioli, like 5-6, depending on how big, or little you make them, in a pot of boiling water. Let them cook for a few minutes.

2)   Then, strain then, I forgot to drain them with cold water, and put them in a container and add your sauce.

3)   Buon' appetito!

The raw ravioli. Notice the scary little one on the right,my first batch, before Mario.

The boiling of the ravioli.

Almost done; all cooked, dressed and undressed ravioli co-mingling.

A fancy close-up!

Yum!