ravioli in progress

Meal: beef ravioli with tomato sauce
Active preparation time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Approximate cost per person: $2.50
Leftovers: one lunch serving
Local ingredients: beef, cheese, eggs
Organic ingredients: tomato puree, flour

Last night, I made homemade ravioli from scratch for the first time. It was very tasty, and rather time consuming. These ravioli weren’t pretty - they certainly didn’t look like the frozen ones you would get out of a bag. However, the effort was totally worth it, and they tasted much better than I would have gotten out of a bag. The next time I do this, I think I’m going to set aside an afternoon and make a ton to freeze. I’m having visions of having ziploc bags in the freezer marked “beef”, “spinach and cheese”, “pesto”, etc., ready to pull out for a fifteen minute dinner.

The pasta recipe I used was the same as the lasagne (only halved), and the ravioli I made last night were beef and cheese filled. I cooked about half a pound of ground beef in a skillet until it was brown, then drained off what little grease there was. I added half a cup of broth to the meat, and cooked it, covered, until the liquid had cooked off. I then let the meat cool, and mixed it with an egg, dried parsley, and garlic powder (in the future, I’d skip the egg, unless I were also mixing in bread crumbs.) I shredded about 6 ounces of cheese total, and mixed some of it in with the beef, and left some loose. Meanwhile, I also got the sauce going - about half of a 28 ounce can of tomato puree, with enough water to get it to our preferred sauce consistency, and spices to taste.

Then it was time to make the ravioli. :)

This took two cutting boards. I rolled out a sheet of pasta on one, then rolled out a sheet of pasta of approximately (very approximately) the same shape and size on the other. On sheet number one, I mounded a small amount (probably a tablespoon’s worth) of the beef and cheese mixture, then mounded a little more cheese on top. I then dipped my fingers into a small bowl of water (a brush would, of course, work better for this) and wet the pasta around and between the mounds. The second pasta sheet got placed gently on top of the mounds, then pushed down around and between them; the wet pasta sheet seals up with the dry pasta almost instantly, though make sure your edges are sealed well. Use a sharp knife to cut between the mounds, and hey! You’ve made homemade ravioli. (This felt like a bit of magic to me last night, making something I’d previously only eaten out of bags.) Transfer the ravioli to a plate or cookie sheet (and make sure that you flour the plate or cookie sheet, which is something I neglected to do last night, lest your ravioli stick to the plate. These are fragile creatures.) and do it again. Once they’re all ready, cook them in boiling water in small batches for one to two minutes (until they start to float, basically, just like the bagged kind.) Drain in a colander, top with tomato sauce and a little more cheese, and feast.