Rockin Ravioli

Twice a year, my nana makes her delicious ravioli. It is a two-day process that starts with cooking off the meat, and ends with pinching dough together by hand. The end result is a piece of heaven in your mouth. My family has regular arguments over who gets to have 10 ravioli versus 9 because it is just that good. Fortunately, Nana has been kind enough to share her recipe. Unfortunately, I have not had two days to devote to such an undertaking. So I took the easy way out so to speak, and made ricotta ravioli. The filling takes all of 5 minutes to make instead of 1 day with meat filling. It involves mixing together three varieties of cheese instead of cooking and frying three types of meat. Clearly, much easier.

 

That said, I did challenge myself by using Seminola Flour for the first time instead of my standard pasta making flour- the Unbleached All Purpose special. Now, I am unsure as to how seminola flour is really supposed to come together into pasta dough, but what I found was that it was much more difficult to work with. The dough itself was much dryer, even with the addition of an extra few tablespoons of water. Overall though, the process was not too difficult, given the right equipment (I need a new rolling pin!!).

 

First, I made the filling, and put it in the fridge to keep cold while I started making the dough. I own the pasta attachment for my KitchenAid, so rolling the dough is very simple. I divided the dough recipe into 7 separate dough balls, which were then shaped into cylinders, and then put them through the dough roller. After the dough was rolled, I placed one piece on a ravioli tray, filled the ravioli, and then placed another on top. Then the pinching started. It is best to use the back of a fork to pinch as it pushes the dough tight together, and allows for minimal breaking when boiling the pasta.

 

The recipe for dough that I used was from the KitchenAid pasta attachment cookbook. I was able to make roughly 4 dozen ravioli from the recipe, but certainly could have made more if some of my dough was not so dry- turns out, even with additions of water, I still did not add enough, hence some of the dough was deemed unusable.

 

Here is the dough recipe:

4 eggs

3 ½ c. Seminola flour

2 tbsp water (or more as necessary) – I used roughly 4 tbsp of water

1 tbsp oil

½ tsp salt

 

Place eggs, water, oil, flour and salt in mixer bowl. Use flat beater and mix for 30 seconds on speed 2. Exchange flat beater for dough hook. Knead 2 minutes on speed 2. Remove dough from bowl and hand knead for 1-2 minutes. Divide dough into eight pieces before processing with pasta roller (or rolling out using rolling pin).

The ravioli filling recipe was taken from Mangia Bene’s website (Mangiabenepasta.com/ravioli). Again, it is very, very simple to make, and when the ravioli is cooked, the filling melts in your mouth. It is delicious!

 

Cheese Ravioli Filling

1 8oz container ricotta cheese- I doubled recipe, so I used 16oz

4 oz shredded mozzarella cheese

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 egg

½ tbsp chopped parsley

Pinch of nutmeg

Salt and Pepper 

Combine ingredients in a bowl and spoon into ravioli dough.

 

Hopefully one day soon I will be able to make the whole kit and caboodle- homemade ravioli dough with a meat filling, but until then, the cheese variety suits me just fine!