This is the view out my front door right now. It started last night we woke up to school being canceled this morning. There were a lot of things I had to do at school today. But the kids are home in their jammies and that is pretty cool too.
Last night I decided that we needed to make ravioli from scratch because we were using the last batch of
Homemade Spaghetti Sauce and that needed something special. I buy it frozen fairly regularly and thought 'how hard can it be?' Famous last words right? There are many things I wish that I had known before hand, like the fact that rolling out pasta dough by hand takes a much stronger person than I am. I also wish that I had used my pasta maker before so that I at least knew what I was doing with it before the kids started saying '
but mom you said this wouldn't take long and we're HUNGRY!'. Hungry kids is a good motivation to get something done though. The ravioli were yummy but the dough was a little too thick. I will be trying this again along with other kinds of noodles the kids want to get their hands on the pasta maker.
2 cups flour
2 large eggs, whole
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. sea salt
3 tablespoons water
Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process for 30 seconds. Check consistency and add a small amount of flour is pasta is too wet, or a small amount of water if pasta is too dry. Process another 30 seconds to incorporate any additions.
Turn dough out onto a silicone mat or work surface sprinkled lightly with flour and knead by hand for a minute or two, until smooth.
Place the dough under a bowl to rest for 20 minutes before rolling, or refrigerate, tightly wrapped in plastic and stored in a plastic bag if not using right away.
Use within a few hours for best results.
Roll pasta out using a roller machine, beginning with the widest setting. Fold dough over and roll through again, gradually decreasing the roller setting as the pasta becomes smoother; dust lightly with flour as needed, but not too much. It helps to brush off excess flour with a pastry brush.
When pasta is thin enough (about a 3 setting on most machines) it is ready for use in making ravioli.
Use the pasta sheets as soon as they are rolled; dry pasta sheets don't seal as well at the edges as fresh sheets, causing the ravioli to separate when cooking. If your pasta sheets have dried out, brush the edges with an egg wash or water (where the pasta is crimped together).
recipe from Cooks.com
For the filling I used
1 C. of
Ricotta cheese (I do wish I had taken the time to make my own)
1/4 C. Parmesan freshly grated
1/4 C. grated Mozzarella
1 egg
1 Tablespoon of
Pesto (used homemade that had been frozen that is why the color is a little off. It wasn't that color in real life just a little darker than fresh)
Just drop teaspoons of filling on to the sheets of pasta. As you can see mine are not a beautiful shape or anything. I ran water around the blobs and then put the other sheet on top and pressed around were the edges would be. I used a pizza cutter to cut them all out. This is all of the ones I got. Certainly not pretty or even uniform looking. I threw them into a pot of boiling water trying to make sure that they were with others the same size. They floated to the top when they were cooked. You can also see the difference in color of before and after.
So over all pretty easy although not as quick as I would have liked but I think that will come with practice. Definitely yummy enough to make again.
