Ravioli | These Light Footsteps

I won’t keep you waiting any longer.

I’m sure that you’ve spent a lot of your time wondering how I used the ricotta that I posted about last. Well, the suspense is over.

It went into homemade ravioli!

I just added 2 Tbs. of Italian seasoning, 2 whisked eggs, and a dash of nutmeg to the gigantic amount of ricotta I made. It definitely made more than was necessary for a night’s worth of ravioli, but I now have plenty of ravioli frozen and ready to use for many dinners to come (all in an afternoon’s work). I’d say if you used half of the ricotta recipe mentioned in the previous post (to make about 3/4 – 1 lb of ricotta), you would make a reasonable amount of ravioli (but you’ll probably still have some leftovers). That’s ok, it tastes awesome and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from seeing your own from-scratch ravioli is totally worth it!

In addition to 1/2 of the ricotta recipe, you’ll also need to make pasta dough. The ingredients include:

3 cups all-purpose organic, unbleached flour
2 large eggs
3 Tbs. water to start
1 Tbs. olive oil
1/4 Tsp. salt

Mix the dry ingredients and form a well in the center in which to add the wet ingredients. Begin to knead everything together. It starts out pretty crumbly, but it gets easier to work with as you go along. Feel free to add additional Tbs. of water at a time to help with the process. I ended up using a lot more than 3 Tbs. of water, but I found it helpful to go slowly with this so that I didn’t get the dough too wet and sticky.

When the dough becomes smooth, it’s ready to roll out with a rolling pin or put through a pasta machine. We were using a CucinaPro(TM) pasta maker. The dough goes through 8 different times and the width of the rollers keeps getting smaller so you end up with a very smooth, thin sheet of pasta. It’s perfect for ravioli.

Sheets of pasta for ravioli making

When the dough has been pressed, you can add about a Tbs. of ricotta mixture for each ravioli. We used a mold (see the bottom part of the mold in the picture above), but there are also devices that function like cookie cutters to help with making ravioli.

Fill the wells with cheese…

Cover with another layer of dough and roll over with a rolling pin..

Fresh pasta cooks very quickly. We added some of the ravioli to a pot of boiling water and cooked for about 5 minutes until they were done.

Delicious!

Ravioli from scratch!

I can’t believe we made these completely from scratch!

And it was also a fun day of inter-generational cooking. Grandma was able to share stories of how her family made pasta when she was young, and we all worked together to feed the dough through the pasta maker. It made me think about the fact that we’ve traded irreplaceable family moments that come from home cooked meals for the convenience of pre-packaged food. The sense of accomplishment and pride that comes from home cooked meals is well worth the effort — these feelings just do not come from opening a can to cook or microwaving a meal!