Homemade Ravioli 12.22.11

A few of weeks ago, I had some homemade ravioli. My aunt and cousin bought it from some place in the Bronx for my grandma, and one of the above relatives offered it to my family, and it had been sitting in our freezer ever since, so I finally ate some.

It was fantastic. 

In case I haven't mentioned this already, I love pasta. I love it more than I love almost any food. Pasta and chocolate are probably on an equal level for me in the category of favorite foods, shortly followed by french toast, crepes, and my family's homemade bread. Anyway, after I tasted this ravioli, I was addicted. I actually made more of the same the next day, before I realized that I was either going to have to:

a) get off my ravioli kick
b) go back to BJ's ravioli
or
c) learn to make my own


Clearly, the first two would have been reasonable choices. And if I had a job, I probably would have picked "b" or been stuck with "a" due to a lack of time.


So I guess one of the benefits of being unemployed and out of school is that you do some really random things about which you would normally say, "Oh yeah, that might be cool to try someday."

Like making homemade ravioli.


Conveniently, my mom bought an old-fashioned ravioli-making kit at some garage sale or another, so I fished that out, enlisted my dad for helping and bantering purposes (who cooks without good banter?) and began.

The dough recipe that came with the box was so bad, I'm not even going to put it in here. Instead, I found another recipe that I will use next time. This time, I got stuck with a really hard dough, which I tried to soften by adding an extra egg, and then which my mom had to save by adding more flour.

 
The thickness of the dough is really important. We made the first batch a little too thick. It was still good, just not ideal.

Sorry I can't figure out how to rotate this one.

 I didn't feel like going to buy ricotta cheese and leaving my nice, happy, warm kitchen. So I used mozzarella and cream cheese along with fresh parsley and garlic powder. It was yummy, although next time I would pack it tighter and maybe experiment with some more cheeses.

Exhibit A

 I know I'm the one in the pictures, but I have to give my dad most of the dough-rolling credit. I clearly have amazing muscle definition (See exhibit A above) but three batches of ravioli involves some heavy duty rolling.

"Yay it looks like real ravioli!!!" -- me

Ta-da!