Getting our Ravioli Roll On.

So we here at Chez Venza have a secret list of dishes that we want to tackle someday.  Every now and again, we’ll see something on TV, a magazine, or a restaurant and think “hey, it looks tough, but let’s take a crack at it down the road.”  Ravioli was probably one of the first dishes on that list.
A couple of years ago, when we were far less adventurous, my wife got us a class on pasta making at a local cooking school.  We got to handle the dough and learn to operate one of THESE.  Now, I’d seen a pasta roller before, but it just looked like it would be much harder to use that it looked.  Well, after a few rounds of supervised practice, it's basically easy as pie (actually much easier than pie.)  We picked up a pasta roller for about $20 and started making noodles.



Ravioli still were kind of daunting.  I mean, you have to individually make each little pocket!  After re-watching the Good Eats episode on making them, however, we decided to take a crack at it.

The first step has to be picking out what kind of filling you want.  The choices are vast, so this is actually harder than it seems.  We wanted to keep it simple, and based on a potential guest, vegetarian.  So we opted for a simple Spinach-Ricotta filling.  This is very similar to a spinach lasagna filling we’ve made before – quite delicious.



Unlike recipes for noodles we’ve used in the past that called for fancy semolina flour, all the recipes seemed to suggest that all-purpose flour was preferred for stuffed pastas.  Here the flour and salt get a quick mix with the dough blade before the egg, water, and olive oil get added. 
There’s our dog Seamus in the background.  Say hi to Seamus!



After the food processor…. the dough is not much to look at.  I confess I despaired at this point.  After an hour in the fridge, it looked more like a real dough.



Starting on the biggest setting (i.e. the thickest output), we run the dough through the pasta roller a few times until it’s in a uniform shape.  Then, we start incrementally decreasing the thickness.  We took it down to level 2… we’ll go down to level 1 next time, as we thought it was still a bit thick.





Holy Sheet!



The filling gets dolled out in 1 tablespoon increments.  These suckers can’t hold much filling… you also have to be careful to leave enough room to seal them with egg wash.



It’s important to push out as much air as you can and make sure the filling is tightly sealed so it doesn’t come out in the pasta pot. 



A few minutes in boiling water, some homemade sun-dried tomato pesto, some crusty bread, and some sausage (the vegetarian couldn’t make it), and you’re in ravioli heaven.  All and all, it IS much easier than it looks, especially when you have teamwork on your side.  Go Team Venza!