I mentioned in my last post that I made a fresh meal for my mother-in-law yesterday, and I also promised to post about the ravioli I made. Before I do that, though, I have to explain why making ravioli is so important to me.
My maternal grandmother, Margaret, was, above all else, a very loving woman. She was also an insanely talented cook. I grew up on the East coast, and during that time, she lived in California. I can count on one hand the number of times I met her, and I can count on one finger the number of times I had her ravioli. But to this day, that ravioli haunts my taste buds. For years, I listed “ravioli” on my favorite food choice in surveys, though the truth was that it was specifically her ravioli that I desired. No store-bought or chain-restaurant-made ravioli has ever come close.
Mine didn’t, either, but I’m willing to chalk it up to years of being tortured by the lack of her ravioli. She died 11 years ago, and the recipe went with her, so I am left to try only what my infantile culinary skills can put together.
Earlier this week, I made cannelloni for Eric, and because I only made half of the package of the shells, I still had a good amount of the cheese mixture left over. While prepping the pasta for his mom yesterday, the thought struck me to make ravioli! My birthday present this year included the pasta maker and the ravioli press, so it only seemed fair to try it.
Since Eric’s mom doesn’t eat cheese, I still made some spaghetti, as well. I also made the sauce. But I used frozen veggies because, I mean, c’mon. How much work can one person really do these days? Also…I had forgotten to buy enough produce. Oops.
I learned from last time, when the pasta didn’t dry long enough. So this time, I started the dough around 9am, while talking to my mom on the phone. I let the ball of dough dry for about 3 hours (some people say to wait a whole day!), and then I ran it through the pasta maker, and used the ravioli press. Our guests arrived almost half an hour after I had finished with the pasta maker. We then went about going to garage sales and what not, and the pasta had about 4 hours to dry on its own. We put a fan on it, just in case.
It came out great! And so did the ravioli. There were quite a few compliments, which is awesome for a person who is hungry for a good ego-stroking, like myself. The sauce was the best yet.
It got me all excited and confident to try out the canning supplies I got.
Anyway…here are the pictures:
You say Polymath like it's a bad thing... 