Tag Archives: ravioli

Colcannon Ravioli

March 17, 2024 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

It’s St. Patrick’s Day and although I don’t really have much of a connection to this day, I thought it would be fun to serve something festive for dinner.

I’ve made colcannon in the past, which is a traditional Irish potato dish with cabbage, and as I was leafing through an Alice Waters cookbook I saw a recipe for potato and spinach ravioli and I thought it would be the perfect dish for St. Patrick’s Day. I didn’t follow her recipe, but made up my own and after boiling the ravioli I sautéd them like pierogis.

Spinach and Potato ravioli in a garlicky cream sauce

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the pasta dough:

225 grams 00 flour
75 grams fine semolina flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon olive oil

For the filling:

1 pound potatoes, any variety (I used a combination of russet, new potatoes and fingerling)
8 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup cream, divided
salt and pepper, to taste

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup cream
salt and pepper, to taste
zest of 1 lemon

Special supplies:

Small food processor or immersion blender
Potato ricer (you could use a potato masher but it won’t be as smooth)
KitchenAid pasta roller adapter (or a hand cranked version would work too)
Ravioli cutter (or a pizza cutter would work)
Shot glass
Large spider strainer (a slotted spoon would work)

Directions:

1. In a large bowl or on a clean, dry countertop, combine the flours. Make a well in the center and add the eggs and olive oil. Whisk the eggs and oil till scrambled, slowly incorporating the flour. Mix into a rough ball and knead for 10 minutes. Wrap in plastic wrap and set aside for at least 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and cut them into roughly the same sized pieces. Boil in salted water until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Place the squeezed spinach and 2 tablespoons of cream in a food processor and run it till the spinach is puréed. You may need to add a little more cream to get it going. When the potatoes are done, drain them and press through a potato ricer into a medium mixing bowl. Add the spinach, Parmesan, butter, remaining cream and salt and pepper. This should be a relatively homogenous consistency. Add more cream if necessary to make it smooth. Place mixture in a gallon zip top bag and refrigerate until cool.

3. Time to assemble the ravioli. Tear a small handful of dough away from your pasta ball and flatten it with your hand. Set the pasta roller on the largest setting and run the dough through. It’s ok if it tears apart a little. Roughly fold the dough into thirds and run it through again on the same setting. Repeat this three or four times until your dough is smooth.

4. Adjust the roller to the next thinnest setting and run the dough through once. Repeat this step making the roller thinner each time until you’ve run it through the thinnest setting.

5. Place the sheet of dough on a clean counter top. With a ravioli or pizza cutter, cut the sheet in half, across the width, not the length.

6. Cut a hole in the corner of the bag containing the filling and place about 1 teaspoon of filling on one half of the pasta sheet. Repeat so you have them evenly spaced on the dough, about 6-8 on the sheet. Place the other half of the dough on top and gently press the air out between the sheets without smashing down the filling. Use a shot glass to center the filling and lightly press down (don’t cut through the dough with the shot glass). This makes the ravioli look more uniform.

7. Use your ravioli cutter to cut out 6-8 ravioli. Pick up each ravioli and make sure the edges are sealed. Pinch any areas that look separated. Place on a semolina lined tray. Cover with foil.

8. Repeat steps 3-7 with the remaining dough and filling.

9. Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Just before the water is boiling, place a large sauté pan over medium-high heat and add the olive oil and butter. Add the garlic and cook till fragrant, turning down the heat to prevent the garlic from burning, about 1 minute. Add the cream, stir, and turn off the heat while you cook the ravioli.

10. Add the ravioli to the boiling water, gently stirring with a spider strainer. Boil the ravioli for 3-5 minutes, until al dente. Remove one ravioli and cut off a corner to see if the dough is cooked to your liking.

11. Heat the sauté pan again over medium-low heat. Remove the ravioli from the water using the spider strainer, give it a good shake to remove excess water, and place into the sauté pan. Gently toss the ravioli till they are all coated with the sauce. Add salt, pepper and lemon zest to taste. You could either serve right away or continue cooking the ravioli until they ever so lightly brown, like pierogis.

12. Serve the ravioli with a drizzle of cream and a grind of pepper.

Cooking, Italian, Pasta, recipes

Squash and Spinach Ravioli

October 17, 2017 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

Sometimes a dish is too good to blog. I’m so busy eating it I don’t think to photograph it. But then some dishes are so good that I have to make them two days in a row just to blog about it.

Last night a friend came over so I could show him how to make ravioli. I winged the filling by using ingredients I already had: delicata squash, frozen chopped spinach, cottage cheese and pecorino Romano cheese.

These tender, flavorful morsels were so good, I just had to make them a day later and share them with my best friend, Kelly.

Squash and spinach ravioli

You will want/need a pasta rolling machine for this recipe – or a wine bottle and a lot of patience.

Serves 3-4

Ingredients for the dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs + 1 yolk
2 tablespoons milk
pinch of salt

Ingredients for the filling:

1 medium delicata squash (sub pretty much any other kind of squash here)
1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1/2 cup cottage cheese (sub ricotta if you’d like)
1/2 cup grated pecorino Romano cheese
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut the squash in half lengthwise. Cut each half in half. Scoop out the seeds and rub all over with olive oil. Season lightly with salt and pepper.

Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 45 minutes or until flesh is pierced easily with a fork. Remove from oven and cool.

While squash is cooling, make the dough. Place the flour in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the center. Add the eggs, milk and salt to the well and whisk together, slowly incorporating the flour until a shaggy dough forms.

Remove from bowl and knead on a floured surface for a couple of minutes. The dough should be smooth and elastic. If it is too wet, add more flour. If it’s too dry, add a little more milk. Continue to knead for a few more minutes, then wrap the dough ball in plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes.

Heat a small pan with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Place into a medium mixing bowl. Squeeze as much of the liquid out of the spinach as you can and add to the bowl. Scrape the squash into the bowl and add the rest of the filling ingredients. Mix with a fork until well combined. Set aside.

Set up your pasta roller and put it on the biggest setting. Take a palm-sized piece of dough and pat it flat. Run it through the pasta roller one time. It may be tough but it’s ok to press it through unevenly. You’ll be using this largest setting to knead the dough for you.

After the first time through, fold the dough in half and run it through again. Continue folding the dough and running it through four or five more times. Now advance your pasta roller to the next setting and run the dough through once.

Continue narrowing the roller and running the dough through once each time until it’s your desired thickness. Each pasta maker is a little different. With my KitchenAid roller I go to setting 6.

Lay your dough on a lightly floured surface or drape it on a bamboo clothes drying rack while you finish the other pieces of dough.

Now it’s time to assemble your ravioli. First, put a salted pot of water on to boil. Take one strip of pasta and place 1 teaspoon of filling across the bottom of one side, about one inch apart with a 1/2-inch space from the edge.

Fold the long side of the dough in half over the filling and start pressing lightly all around, pushing out air as you go. Press around all the filling so the pasta sticks to itself.

Using a pastry scraper or pizza cutter, cut your dough into individual ravioli. Be sure to cut the long edge because the cutting actually seals the pasta.

Boil your ravioli in two batches. Once the pot returns to a boil, simmer the pasta for just a few minutes until it’s al dente. I like to take a ravioli out of the pot and cut off a corner to test the doneness.

Use a large slotted spoon or spider to remove the ravioli from the pot. Place into shallow serving bowls. Top with a little butter, good olive oil, more pecorino Romano cheese, and a generous amount of freshly ground pepper. Serve with green beans and Italian sausage.

Cooking, Italian, Pasta, recipes

Ravioli Nudi and the End of Summer Camp

October 6, 2014 alaskaknitnat 2 Comments

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend End of Summer Camp, which proved to be a unique bonding experience for Anchorage grown-ups. I met bloggers, event planners, printmakers, food critics, photographers, storytellers and other local professionals all while enjoying nostalgic campy activities. The campers were fed by Fork Catering, and I took every available moment to enjoy their meals and chat with chefs Rob and Dave.

Chef Rob Kinneen taught a cooking workshop, which I eagerly signed up for. Turns out he was going to demonstrate homemade pasta-making. I’m familiar with making my own pasta, such as comb pastas, basil fettuccine and Russian pelmeni, but I was interested in learning techniques from a professional chef.

He led a hands-on lesson on tortelloni and ravioli nudi. The tortelloni, which were essentially large tortellini, were familiar to me, but the ravioli nudi were entirely new. The nudi are like ravioli without the noodle, literally naked ravioli. Instead you incorporate cheeses, flour, herbs and egg into a sticky, soft dough and create small dumplings, which are then boiled. They are sort of like gnocchi, but with cheese instead of potato.

Chef Rob Kinneen (left) instructs campers on how to roll out ravioli nudi dough. — Chef Rob Kinneen instructs campers on how to roll out ravioli nudi dough.

My only attempt at making gnocchi in the past was a complete slimy failure and Rob’s technique for making nudi could be easily translated to gnocchi. I had to try the recipe myself when I got home.

And I did.

Ravioli Nudi with Spinach, Ricotta, and Parsley

Serves 3

Ingredients:

2 eggs
2 egg yolks
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 tsp. red chili flakes
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
8 oz. part-skim ricotta cheese
1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
2 Tbs. chopped Italian parsley
2 Tbs. chopped frozen spinach, thawed and well drained
1/4 cup all-purpose flour plus about 1/2 cup for coating dough

Useful utensil: spider strainer

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl with ice and cold water and set beside the pot. Meanwhile beat together the eggs, yolks, garlic, chili flakes, nutmeg, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Incorporate the ricotta till smooth. Add the parmesan, parsley and spinach. Slowly add the 1/4 cup flour till a super sticky dough forms. It should be the consistency of thick, lumpy pancake batter. Heavily flour a large cutting board. Gently turn the dough onto the board and work in enough extra flour for it to be very soft and sticky inside, but coated on all sides in flour. Form the dough into a 1.5-inch tall rectangle.

Cut the dough into 1.5-inch strips and gently roll each strip around, dusting with flour, till coated evenly on all sides. Cut each strip on a diagonal into 1-inch pieces so you have small, oblong dumplings. Gently roll each dumpling around in your floured hand till they are each coated and no sticky dough is exposed.

When the water is at a rolling boil, gently add the ravioli in batches so the water doesn’t cool down too much. Boil for just a few minutes, until the ravioli float to the surface. With a slotted spoon, strain out the ravioli and add to the ice water bath. Repeat with remaining ravioli.

Now that you have made your ravioli nudi, there are lots of ways to serve them. Use them in any ravioli recipe, or fry them up with butter till lightly browned and crusty.