I found what appears to be some sort of ravioli maker in a drawer. It’s about four inches across with a half-inch rim, and opens like a clam shell. I also have a pasta recipe: Mix four eggs and two cups of flour, and roll flat. Now about the filling…
I’m thinking of 1.5c ricotta cheese with 3/4c grated parmesan plus an egg, garlic, and some chopped parsley. Maybe some nutmeg, only I don’t know how much. Should I use a hole egg? Or just the yolk? Should I add salt? Also, I’ve never made ravioli from scratch. Do I wet the edges of the pasta with water, or with egg white?
This recipe seems to fit what you’re trying to do. As for nutmeg, I would just use a pinch - the easiest way is probably to add a pinch, mix then taste. Lather, rinse, repeat until you get the flavour you want.
As for closing the ravioli parcels, the linked recipe says to cut the pasta into individual squares, fold over and press the edges closed with the tines of a fork, but since you have a fancy doo-dad for that, just brush some water along the edges of the pasta beforehand to help the sealing process.
That sounds about right. I don’t think I’ll put pepper in it, since I like pepper in the sauce. The linked recipe calls for romano. I had a nice chunk of aged parm that I grated and stored in the freezer. Would it be OK to use the parm? (I made manicotti a while back and I used both.)
The ‘dodad’ was found in the back of a drawer I never use (until now). My friend I bought my house from must have bought it.
I made the filling first. That went well. I can’t say how much nutmeg or salt I used, and I did put in a couple of shakes of pepper after all. I used fresh Italian parsley. The garlic had started to sprout so I used minced garlic from a jar.
Then I started on the pasta. This was my first attempt. I had a bunch of doughglobs and quite a bit of unincorporated flour after combining four cups of flour and four eggs. Yep, I messed up. Should’ve been two cups of flour. :smack: I looked up a recipe and found I should have added oil too. So I splashed in some olive oil and added a couple more eggs. I gave up on the fork and mixed it by hand. I rolled a bit at a time, having found that trying to do the whole lot at once was not going to work. Even so, I still rolled too much.
The first several raviolis were too thick, which I discovered when I decided to use balls of dough about the size of ping-pong balls. At first I thought I was rolling them too thin, but they held together. I cut off the excess, some of which had the cheese mixture on it, and put it into a container. Once I got the hang of the ravioli maker thing I got less filling squeezing out the edges. Finally I got through the balls of ‘fresh’ dough. Then I took the scraps and recycled them. I ended up with 31 raviolis. I rolled out the rest of the dough and cut it into strips with a pizza cutter. This ‘fettuccine’ was allowed to lay on the cutting board for a little while and then put into a Glad container.
I floured the cutting board and laid out the pile of raviolis into rows, and then dusted the tops with flour. I had nine on the plate, one of which was a bit mangled because I had failed to flour the plate and it stuck. I patched it with some scraps from the ‘fettuccine’. So nine large raviolis went into the pot of boiling water. As they were on the bottom of the pile, they were the first ones made – the thick ones. After boiling for 20 minutes they were ready, and I drained them and put them on a plate with some Prego ‘Traditional’ sauce.
And…
It’s not bad. Pretty good, actually. I should have put more salt in the filling, and maybe some in the pasta. But it’s as good as some ravioli I’ve had from restaurants, and better than a couple of places. It was a bit of a PITA to make, but now that I’ve figured out how much dough to roll out each time I think it will be easier next time. Four raviolis in the stomach, and five to go into the fridge. The other 22 are in a zip-lock bag in the freezer.
Cleaning up is going to be a bitch. A bit of flour about, and a big bowl that needs to be washed – and no room in the drying rack.
Roomie left his cutting board when he moved out. I’ve been using it until he hets this way again. But knowing he was moving, I bought my own – which turned out to be larger than his. (I didn’t bother to measure; just estimated at the store.) Being larger, I thought it would be better for rolling out the dough. I’d given it a coating of mineral oil a couple of weeks ago. His was scored from who-knows-how-long of use, and I don’t think he’d ever oiled it. Having cleaned it several times, I knew that stuff stuck to it and I looked with dismay upon the flour that covered my new board.
I needn’t have been dismayed. The flour and ‘stuck-on’ dough came right off. You can be sure I’ll keep it properly oiled! And I think I’ll sand roomie’s board and oil it too. It will make it easier to clean, and he might appreciate it when he gets it back.
So clean-up wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
Ah! That’s exactly what it is. I’ve never had pierogi. Oh, well. It did work for ravioli. And come to think of it, the friend who left it is a quarter Polish. (His mom makes tasty golumpki.)
