For my last week of learning I wanted to invent my own ravioli. When I first started this journey, one of my inquiry questions asked whether there was such a thing as breakfast ravioli. Well there is now! I decided to play with my filling to make it bursting with breakfast flavors. I also needed to make a sauce that was more breakfast and less Italian dinner. I mostly went with my gut when it came to choosing the ingredients. I knew for my filling I would need a cheese, some herbs, and something "breakfasty." As for my sauce, well I have seen some recipes on Pinterest for raviolis with a brown butter sauce and butter sounds very breakfast. I will warn you now, these little guys are Dec-a-dent! I ended up only eating two pieces because they were so crazy. Without further ado, here is my recipe! Ingredients:
1. Cook the bacon in a pan until it is brown and crispy. Remove bacon and place on a paper towel to soak up excess grease. Take pan off the heat and pour out the grease in a glass container. Don't clean off the pan yet. You'll use the fond on the bottom of the pan to make your sauce. TIP: Save the bacon grease in a glass container and use it later to sweat onions, etc. My great grandma use to spread it on toast as a treat. Bacon spread is not my cup of tea but no need to waste it! 2. In a bowl, mix together the cream cheese, ricotta, chives, bacon, parm, and S&P. If your mixture is too wet, add some bread crumbs. 3. Spoon a TSP of the mixture onto a sheet of pasta. Repeat this process, leaving about an inch between each dollop. 4. Use the egg wash to paint between the fillings. This will act like glue, keeping the raviolis from falling apart in the water. 5. This next part is tricky. It would work best if you were a octopus/person hybrid. Anyways... Take the other sheet of pasta and slowly lay it down on the sheet with the filling. As you pass each dollop of filling, use the side of your hand to press out the air. It should look like you are karate chopping the sheet of pasta. 6. Using your fingertips, carefully press out any remaining air around your filling. You want a good seal, with no air, because it will burst when it hits the boiling water. 7. Using a pizza wheel, kitchen knife, or ravioli stamp, cut out each, individual ravioli. If you do not have a stamp, use a fork, dusted with flour, to crimp the edges of each rav. 8. Boil a pot of water. Add a handful of salt to the water once it is boiling (think ocean water). 9. Dunk the littler raviolis into the water. Once they float to the top, let them cook for about 2 minutes. 10. Using your bacon pan, heat up the butter. When it starts to bubble, add the chopped up Thyme. 11. Take it off the heat and drizzle over the raviolis. Reflection TimeI absolutely dreaded making pasta this week. I have so much I need to do that I didn't want to spend time making ravioli. Once I got started, it was nice to zen out for a bit and just focus on cooking and not the million edTPA fears I have floating around in my head. If I was to adjust this recipe, I would add some sort of acid somewhere. Maybe in the sauce. It was very savory and needed something to cut through all the heavy flavors. My brother/taste-tester really loved this ravioli. He said this was my best pasta dough and the flavors were so crazy. I cannot believe this learning process has come to an end! I feel like I didn't get to answer all my questions but I did learn a lot. Next week is reflection time and I look forward looking back on my ravioli journey and sharing even more insights.
Hmphf. That is my attempt at spelling the derisive exhale that automatically escapes my mouth when I think about my attempt at dessert ravioli. This weekend I was strapped for time and resources so I decided to create a ravioli I thought was fool proof. I was going to create a dessert ravioli with a chocolate hazelnut filling and strawberry sauce. The week prior I had frozen two sheets of rolled out pasta dough so this week's adventure would take like 30 minutes tops. Since this weekend was Easter and my family was hosting the Easter egg hunt party my mom has been cleaning the house since last Monday. The mere utterance of ravioli made her blood run cold. She didn't even have to say anything. Just one look...shivers. There was definitely no way I could make pasta dough from scratch so I pulled the sheets from the freezer and patiently waited for them to thaw. And waited. And waited. Um....what the hell? Three hours passed and my sheets still looked the same! They didn't feel cold when I touched them, they were hard. I tried to rub some water on them but that did little to nothing. I guess when I put the sheets in the freezer, all the moisture lefts my pretty little sheets and left a dried piece of pasta that broke in half when I tried to manipulate it. That's right, broke in half. Hmphf. My mom happened to be behind me polishing the light fixtures above the peninsula when I turned around with my shards of freezer burned pasta sheets. She smiled and shared her condolences but under no circumstances was I to make a mess. I looked longingly at my pints of ripe strawberries and jar of Nutella. So much potential. Okay. Obviously I am being dramatic for effect since my attempt totally flopped this week and I have nothing to show for it. I think the conditions would be different if my house was not being primped and prepped for Easter Sunday but c'est la vie. I learned that you cannot freeze sheets of pasta (or maybe you can but you would have to control the moisture so they don't dry out and I have zero clue how you do that). I learned that strawberries are just as good dipped in Nutella as they are simmered with lemon juice and sugar, and drizzled over little pillows of molten chocolate. I think most importantly I learned that I do not like to be bad at something. I often want to do something right the first time but this week allowed me to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I had no clue what I was going to do about this post but I had fun writing it. Hopefully it provided you with some laughter at my expense. Ravioli vs Raviolo: Sometimes you see both of these words tossed around an Italian recipe. The difference is number! Raviolo means one single parcel of pasta, stuffed with a filling, and served with a sauce. Ravioli is the plural. Not only is it the first day of Spring but it is also National Ravioli Day! I also saw on Instagram that it was International Happiness Day...coincidence? I think not! I spent 20% of my time this week gearing up to make a meat filling for my ravioli. Whenever I order ravioli at an Italian restaurant, I always order meat ravioli! It is my all time favorite. My goals for this week were to roll it out thinner and not over cook the pasta in the water.
My first goal was to roll out my pasta thinner. Enter my friend Sophie. She was gracious to lend me her families pasta roller. It seriously made making the dough so much easier!! I started my process with a new little trick I saw on YouTube where instead of making my flour well directly on the counter, I made it in a bowl. This simple little switch made a huge difference in my clean up and had no effect on the end product. I followed the same pasta dough recipe...more or less. Like I said last week, I am a total recipe rebel and kind of just wing it. The pasta roller made a huge difference and was so incredibly easy to use. The only tricky part was how long the dough became. Sophie warned me about this so I knew I might have to have some extra hands to help. I asked my brother to come out of his video game cave to help me out in exchange for pasta and he graciously excepted. He suggested I cut the dough when it became too long for me to roll out by myself which is what I ended up doing by the end of the whole process. Since I was able to roll out my dough thinner, I found that I had a lot more dough to play around with! I decided to test out the freezing method I researched a few weeks back. I made some extra meat raviolis to freeze and then rolled out two sheets of pasta to freeze. I wanted to see if I could freeze the sheets, thaw them out next week, and then use them. Hopefully it works because next weekend is Easter and I don't want to add to the hectic mess that will be Easter dinner. I got the hang of filling the little guys and next came my last hurdle...cooking them. Since the pasta is fresh, it cooks in like no time. We are talking 60 seconds if that. According to my taste testers (Dad + Brother) they did not seem over cooked! Success! I have to toot my own horn and totally agree. These little raviolis rocked! I am glad I already threw the extras in the freezer because I could have eaten all of them. Next week is total experiment time. I want to make a dessert ravioli with a berry sauce. I am hoping to use the frozen sheets so fingers crossed those thaw out properly! Fun Fact: The word ravioli is from an old Italian word riavvolgere (“to wrap”) Now I know I have admitted before that I am a pasta addict but I wanted to introduce you to one of my other vices...Food Network. No shame but I am obsessed with so many of their shows. So admittedly, my perception of at home cooking is probably a little skewed. I watch these chefs stand in their kitchen and throw ingredients together to make amazing looking dishes. Their words mention amounts but they always shrug their shoulders and throw a little more olive oil down. I tend to follow suit and just go with it when I am cooking. I will say that when I am baking, I always follow a recipe exactly because that shiz is science and I want to eat cookies, not scrape burnt sugar goop off the walls of my oven. In preparation of this week's project progress, I went to the store to pick up the ingredients I read about during last week's research (with a little improvisation). When I meal prep and plan out my meals for the week I have a whole shopping list down to amounts so I don't waste any food or money. My trip this weekend was only for ravioli stuff so I walked into Trader Joe's with a basket in my hand and grabbed whatever I thought would be yummy. Ricotta (check). Lemons (check). Parsley (check). My Mom had brought home eggs from a neighbor earlier this week and I already have flour, and good parm so all I needed was some sauce and I was good to go.
Whoever said kneading dough was tough never rolled out pasta with a rolling pin. It was a complete upper body workout ha! All the videos/blogs I visited during my research said to invest in a pasta roller. I figured that since little old ladies in Italy could do it with just a rolling pin, then so could I. Yeah I underestimated my rolling endurance. Since all the videos I viewed showed running the dough through each setting twice (running it through and then folding it over and running it again), I tried to replicate this by rolling out the dough and then folding it in half and then rolling it out again. The problem I ran into was knowing how thin to roll the dough out. I was basically winging it and rolling it out until it looked like what I thought it should look like. Once I had all the dough rolled out, I put about a tablespoon of the filling an inch apart. Oh wait!! The filling... I almost forgot. So just call me the recipe rebel because this filling was whatever I felt like. I knew that classic cheese ravioli is a mix of salt, ricotta, parmigiano reggiano, and egg. I decided to add Italian Parsley and lemon zest because I LOVE lemon. No recipe, just my Food Network education guiding me. The only thing I would change next time is add more salt and use full fat ricotta. Trader Joe's only had fat free (which is basically water pretending to be cheese-boo). Okay so back to my ravs. I added about a table spoon of filling an inch apart and using a pastry brush, I painted on some egg wash (egg+water=pasta glue). I gently laid the new sheet of pasta over my first piece, careful to squeeze out all the air. This step is super important because if there are air pockets your raviolis will explode in the boiling water. I cut out each little rav and used a fork to pinch all the sides. Once I had all my raviolis made, I boiled some salted water and threw them in. I leaned back on the counter and realized I had no idea how long they were supposed to cook. I remember hearing on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives that they are ready when they float but that happened so quickly and I didn't want to eat raw pasta dough... I pulled out my phone and did a quick google search and saw that fresh pasta cooks in like 60 seconds. Well I was definitely over 60 secs so I pulled them out and added them to a bowl. Topped them with some sauce, more parm, and some parsley. I then forced my roommates to taste test before I dug in. My favorite part of cooking is sharing so I love to have someone taste my food before I do. Roommate consensus? They thought the pasta (which they kept calling pastry) was too thick but, all in all, it was really yummy. After trying my hard work I thought the same thing. I definitely over cooked the pasta (please don't tell my favorite Food Network chefs) and the dough could have probably been a little thinner. I think I will look into one of those counter top pasta rollers for next week. I also want to look into making a meat filling and test out freezing some of my raviolis to use later in the week. I am a little bummed that no one is studying massage therapy for their 20 time because I will be feeling my rolling pin workout tomorrow! Overall I am really excited how these turned out considering I did not have a recipe out to follow. Pasta is just so forgiving and it allows for a lot of creativity and play. Fun Fact: China invented the original filled pasta in the form of wontons or pot stickers. Archeologists have found examples from the 9th Century. The earliest records of Italian ravioli are in the letters of a merchant from Prato in the 14th Century. In the last few years I have been really interested in nutrition. It all started my first year of college when my Composition professor had us spend half the semester researching Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and writing argumentative papers on whether or not we thought our food should be labeled for GMO's. That semester sparked my interest in food science and nutrition. I started exploring blogs which informed its readers about what is actually in our food and what illnesses are linked to all the additives in processed food. If this is something that interested you too I highly suggest checking out Vani Deva Hari's blog Food Babe. Vani has fought the good fight against a lot of big chain fast food restaurants to get their shady ingredients exposure as well as improve what ingredients they use. Remember when all the News broadcasts were talking about Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte having no actual pumpkin? That was Vani and her 'Food Babe army!' Another blog I turn to for food information is Annie Lawless' blog BLAWNDE. Annie is one of the founders of the crazy, popular, local juice company Suja (which is amazing and you should try every one of their juices). She has a really awesome series on her blog called "You think its healthy but its lying" that takes food you think is a good choice and explains why those "healthy" foods are actually needed in moderation if not at all. So what does this have to do with ravioli?Part of the reason I am really interested in making ravioli from scratch is controlling what I choose to put in my body. I am deeply interested in how our body breaks down certain foods and how that effects us in other ways. When I started to look into ravioli, I wanted to know what exactly goes into making pasta from scratch. I found a lot of amazing recipes on Pinterest and one that actually led me to a really interesting blog post about making pasta from scratch. Niki Achitoff-Gray over at Series Eats did a lot of the dirty work when it comes to making pasta from scratch. She basically spent all day in her test kitchen, playing around with ingredients until she found the best combination of ingredients for fresh pasta. Not to mention, she has some series food photography skills for each step by step instruction. Something that I wish to mimic when I actually get into making it myself next week. In case you're wondering why I didn't start this week, I wanted to work on researching my topic thoroughly at first before creating a mess in the kitchen. Also, this weekend was my Mom's 50th birthday and that took over my "play" time. Lets Breakdown the Ingredients!FLOUR, EGGS, WATER, SALT! OH MY!The first ingredient that pasta has to have is flour. When you mix water with flour you get gluten! According to Achitoff-Gray, gluten is, "the network of proteins that gives pasta its stretchy texture and bite." There are 3 staple flours when it comes to Italian cooking: All Purpose (AP), "00", and Semolina. AP is the most widely used in home kitchens because it is widely available. "00" is a finely milled flour that is often used in pizza dough due to its powder like texture and ability to create a delicate dough. Semolina flour is a heartier texture of flour and allows for the sauce to grip the noodle. Those sandy little bits on the bottom of your pizza are often Semolina flour! Some recipes call for a mix of 00 and Semolina but Achitoff-Gray didn't test that out in her experiments, she only used AP. Looks like I found myself something to experiment with! According to the blog, the flour and water pasta was a sticky, worthless mess, and the flour and egg white pasta was not that much better. The Egg yolk pasta was too stiff to roll out a pasta that would be stuffed (big no go for ravioli). The author said, "Unfortunately, that high fat content complicates things a little bit. Though not exactly scientifically accurate, you can think of that fat as making the gluten proteins all slippery, preventing them from building a strong network—when I tested this using different amounts of olive oil, I found that, sure enough, more oil made for softer, mushier, less elastic noodles." She found that by using both whole eggs and egg yolks, the pasta dough would come together easier and make for a nice, flexible dough ready to be stuffed with whatever my heart desired! PRO TIP: Mixing by hand guarantees that you can fix your dough as you are mixing. She also played around with salt, water, and proportions but I'll cut to the good part and share the recipe for pasta dough:
Okay, so next week... It is pasta making time!! I plan on making a classic cheese stuffed ravioli with tomato basil sauce. In addition to making the pasta, documenting the process through pictures, and taste testing, I will provide fun history factoids about ravioli! Buon Appetito! After some consideration and some amazing feedback from my Housemates I have made my decision for my 20% project. I will be learning how to make ravioli from scratch! If I am being honest I went into this project almost set on learning how to do a handstand in yoga. Not to say I will never learn this it just does not fit into my schedule right now. When I tossing around the yoga idea I was asked the most useful question, "where will you practice these handstands?" Umm....Guess I never thought about that. My house is completely tiled and my bedroom does not have a good space set up to swing my legs around in the air. This really put my project into perspective (thanks for the question George!). That leaves delicious, amazing ravioli! I am excited to try my hand at making pasta dough from scratch and finding the perfect filling. I created a Pinterest board to get the ball rolling and found there are so many variations to explore and play with. My favorite part of cooking is sharing it with others so get ready housemates because you will be trying all my creations. Stay tuned for my first update! Buon Appetito! In conjunction with one of my CSUSM classes I am completing a 20% project based on the Google 20% project. I will spend 20% of my time (once a week) learning to do something. Anything I want. Talk about agency with my learning! So where do I even start? I have always considered my self a ferocious learner. I like to pick up random tidbits of information and add it to my arsenal of edification. To figure out what I wanted to learn during this project I turned to two sources: Instagram and Pinterest. I wanted to look at what other people are doing and see what peaks my interest. In this search I found two really cool ideas. The problem is...I can't decide! Help me figure it out? Please?! Making Ravioli From ScratchHello. My name is Sarah and I am a pasta addict. Seriously. And at the tippy top of my favorite pasta list is ravioli. Oh how I love a good bowl of ravioli. I have been on a bit of a clean eating kick so I don't eat it often. Since it is such a rare occurrence, the usual Trader Joe's, drop in the water, add a bottle of organic arrabbiata pasta sauce, and call it day won't cut it anymore! I am officially ready to learn! I absolutely love cooking. It is my time to check out for a moment and not worry about anything else going on. I have never made pasta from scratch or a real deal sauce so I am excited to roll my sleeves up and get to kneading! Here are some questions leading my quest to ravioli perfection:
Yoga: HandstandNow here is something I have always been envious of. Have you ever seen those Yogi's upside down on their hands/heads? Now my goal is not to take some staged Instagram photo (#zen) but to gain a better understanding of the practice of Yoga and flip my perspective, literally. I have been interested in yoga for quite some time now. I practice Pilates which is similar to yoga but more of a workout. Ever since Pat introduced us to Mindfulness practices I have been itching to practice yoga and work my way up to the cool handstands I see on social media. I feel like there is more of a threat for failure with this project which makes it a little more appealing. I would love to smash those odds.
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