The past few months have been crazy...so I must begin by apologizing for not posting! I have a plethora of food pictures that I've taken, so I'll be sure to get those up. Decided I needed to come back with a bang, so first up I bring you: homemade ravioli!
Place 3 cups of all purpose flour, and 3 eggs into a kitchen aid with a dough attachment. [If you're feeling particularly motivated, you can mix the dough by hand. You make a well in the flour and place the eggs and olive oil in it, then start mixing!]
Add a half teaspoon of salt...
And 3 tsp of olive oil (that equals 1 TB!)
Next, add 1 cup of water. Once you start adding the water, the dough will start to form into a ball!
Place a whole bunch of flour on the (clean!) counter, and place your dough ball on the counter. Start kneading! Basically you punch the dough, gather, flip, punch. Keep going. Don't overknead...you'll get a sense of when it's pretty well formed.
Lightly coat the dough ball with olive oil, and wrap in plastic wrap. Let your dough rest for 30 minutes. Take this opportunity to pour yourself a glass of wine! :)
How relaxed and rested does my dough look??
Grab your rolling pin and roll that sucker out. Try to get a general rectangular shape. Now I really felt that I couldn't get the dough as thin as it needed to be for ravioli on my own with the rolling pin. But I don't have a pasta roller quite yet, so this had to do. If you have one, whip it out now and get rolling! (Initially roll with rolling pin, then put through pasta roller).
Once your dough is ready, work on your filling. We chose to do a ricotta/parmesan mixture with sausage. You could also do sweet potato or pumpkin filling if you're feeling seasonal...yum! So now I'm heating up my sausage...(place a little bit of water in a pan with the sausage,then put the lid on. Once the water is all gone, the sausage is ready! Let it brown up a little bit).
For the cheese part of the filling, I mixed ricotta, parmesan, pepper, a little salt, and oregano. You could do thin individual strips of the dough, but I chose to make it a little bit wider so I could simply fold over the dough.Place a dollop of the cheese mixture, and top with a little of the cut-up sausage. Place each spoonful about a 1/2 inch a part. Not too close to the edge.
Fold the dough over. Use your fingers to define the area around each filling a little bit.
Grab your handy dandy ravioli cutter that you just got from William-Sonoma! If you don't have one, don't fret...you can grab one for about $12 or get creative. Use a pastry cutter or small cooke cutter.
Cut your ravioli out! Hold the ravioli cutter over each area of filling.
Fold the dough over. Use your fingers to define the area around each filling a little bit.
Grab your handy dandy ravioli cutter that you just got from William-Sonoma! If you don't have one, don't fret...you can grab one for about $12 or get creative. Use a pastry cutter or small cooke cutter.
Cut your ravioli out! Hold the ravioli cutter over each area of filling.Get a bunch of them made. In the meantime, you need to boil some water. Make sure that you salt it very well! Salted water = flavorful pasta.
Place your prepared ravioli into the boiling water. Make sure that all of your ravioli edges are sealed tightly so your filling doesn't come out while it's cooking! Be careful not to get burnt when you drop the pasta in - gently!
Boil, boil, boil! It takes 3-5 minutes to cook. You'll know when it's ready because your ravioli will rise to the surface of the water.
Remove cooked ravioli from water with a slotted spoon so that you don't get a watery bowl of homemade ravioli. We topped ours with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and cracked pepper. You could also do a marinara sauce, or a sage butter sauce. Have fun and make it work for your tastebuds!
Super easy to do...and a really fun thing to do with someone you love! Get cooking -
Mary
I never new it was that simple! Looks great Mary.
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