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”)
3 Comments
Caitlin Eichlin
3/20/2016 06:47:24 pm
Sarah,
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Sophia Monaco
3/24/2016 07:18:47 am
I am so glad the pasta roller worked out for you! It really makes a huge difference. And it helps you make more ravioli, which is always a great thing!! I like the new methods that you tried this week and I can't wait to see what you experiment with next week. Have you come across any recipes for dessert ravioli or are you just going with your gut?
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Sarah Hunter
4/27/2016 01:31:40 pm
Yay for friends! So cool that Sophie was able to help you out by lending the pasta roller. I love that you recruited your brother to help you with the dough. This week was really a group effort and you nailed it!
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