First pasta attempt. Not too bad.
I tried my hand at making my own pasta tonight.
I followed the Good Eats (trade mark all rights reserved) recipe from the Food Network website, which only underscores my belief that recipes should only be used as rough guidelines, and are much like rules in high school. Made to be broken.
The recipe calls for 3 cups of flour, 2 large eggs, 3 tablespoons of water, and a half teaspoon of salt.
The problem here is the amount of moisture to add.
Following the recipe to the letter left me with a crumbly mass which could only be rolled into pasta through Herculean efforts.
Realizing this was going horribly wrong, I gathered up the rest of the flour, added another egg, and a splash of water, then added enough flour to make the right consistency.
This dough turned out pretty good.
So, with a lot of waste, and half my ravioli all thick and clunky, I still managed to make enough for dinner and lunch tomorrow.
I cooked my ravioli in small batches, throwing into my pasta strainer to drain. Ravioli are easy to cook. When they float up to the top, they’re done.
I melted some butter in olive oil over medium heat, and tossed in red pepper flake, salt, black pepper, and a little oregano. I tossed the pasta in this simple sauce and grated some gruyere over top.
My ravioli filling was frozen spinach, thawed and drained, tossed with salt, ricotta cheese and one egg. The trick to stuffing ravioli is to get a very tiny spoon, only fill it about halfway, then only put half that much in your ravioli. You really just want a tiny tiny little bit of stuffing. Too much, and it oozes all out the side and your ravioli explodes in the pot. No good.
I’ve got a bucket o’ stuffing left over. Maybe I’ll break out my pizza dough recipe and make up some cal-zones.