On Monday night, because (as usual) we had leftover ingredients lying around, we decided to use up the goat cheese and make ravioli. Here’s how it went down….
First, I mixed up the pasta dough. I started with the basic recipe that came with the KitchenAid stand mixer roller attachments, halved, but made some adjustments of my own based on past experiences with it:
- 1-3/4 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- water (the recipe calls for a tablespoon, but the exact amount you will need will always vary depending on humidity and how packed the flour was. I probably used about 2 tablespoons this time total; you have to go by how the dough looks – see below)
- chopped dried chives (I’m guessing about a tablespoon’s worth; I didn’t measure)
Into the bowl it all went and was mixed using the regular paddle attachment until it came together into a dough ball (this is the part where you have to add water a teeny bit at a time until it comes together, but if it gets too sticky, you add a little more flour, and so on and so forth until you get the right consistency – able to be formed into a ball, but not sticky).
Next, I switched out the paddle attachment for the dough hook, and kneaded the dough for about two minutes, after which I kneaded by hand it for another two minutes.
I wrapped the dough ball in plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge, mostly because the recipe I was basing off of said to, but I don’t think this step is truly necessary if you are in a hurry (it’s not like this is pie dough and contains butter that needs to re-harden or anything. As long as it’s made to the right consistency to begin with, I think you could skip the fridge and start rolling and cutting right away). All in all, last night’s dough ball probably only spent about 10 minutes in the fridge while I was waiting for Hubby to be ready to make the sauce (that was his half of the responsibility for last night’s dinner festivities).
As for that sauce, I initially was going to simply use the sauce that I had made a few weeks ago and froze, but Hubby found a Butter and Sage Sauce recipe by Mario Batali, so that’s what we ended up deciding on. The sauce had four simple ingredients:
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 8 sage leaves (Hubby substituted about a tablespoon of dried sage leaves instead)
- 1/2 lemon, juiced
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Hubby put the sauce together according to Mario’s recipe, except he added the cheese right away instead of waiting for the pasta to be tossed in. This way the sauce would be waiting for me, all done, as soon as the pasta was cooked. He also decided after he was done that it might not be enough sauce, so he went back and doubled the recipe.
While he was doing all of this, I was rolling out pasta dough and turning it into raviolis.
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| First, I divided the dough into four sections and made sure they had enough flour on the outside to not stick to the rollers. |
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| Next, I started rolling each piece through the machine, according to the machine's instructions.... |
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| ....until it was as thin as I wanted it. |
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| Next, I cut each strip of flat dough in half, inserted bits of goat cheese on the bottom layer, wet the seams with water, and covered it with the top layer. |
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| Then I cut them into individual ravioli and trimmed off the excess. |
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| The leftover pieces of dough, which you can see here being cut off and piled up in the corner of the cookie sheet, were brought back to the rollers and made into more flat sections/more ravioli. Nothing got wasted. |
We ended up with twelve BIG ravioli. Just look at those chives peeking through:
Finally, it was time to cook the pasta and toss it in the sauce.
....and.....Presto! One delicious dinner:
I know you are probably thinking that this is awfully time consuming for a weeknight dinner, but really it’s not. When making homemade pasta, especially with an electric mixer, you can have your dough mixed and in the fridge in less than 10 minutes. And while you are waiting for your water to boil is when you do your rolling and cutting. So, really, other than the extra 10 minutes to make the dough, you are looking at the same amount of time as if you cooked a box of pasta, except this time, you are doing something productive while waiting for the water to boil other than watching the pot – you are rolling and cutting pasta. I have decided, though, that I would like to invest in some ravioli molds, maybe something like this, in order to be able to make them more uniformly sized and shaped next time.
