Something a little different

Anyone that knows me knows that I adore food. I love to eat food but I do also enjoy cooking it. As I said yesterday I made some ravioli and I thought I'd share the recipe with you just in case you were tempted. I used this recipe for the filling and adapted it slightly. The post also includes an excellent photo tutorial showing you how to roll and stuff the pasta.

Ingredients:

100g of strong flour (type 00 is finer if you can get it
1 egg
a slug of olive oil
a pinch of salt.

125g ricotta cheese
1 tablespoon of Parmesan
4 sundried tomatoes
salt and pepper for seasoning
Italian herbs for seasoning (fresh basil would be preferable but I didn't have access to any)

Method: 

Filling:

- Make this before you make your pasta.

- Finely cut your sundried tomatoes up.

- Mix them with the ricotta, Parmesan, salt, pepper and herbs.

- Refrigerate until ready to use.

Pasta:

- Make a well with the flour, crack the eggs into the middle of it and add the olive oil and salt. Mix the eggs with your fingers and gradually pull in the flour a little at a time.

- Keep pulling in the flour until it's combined with the eggs and oil.

- Form a dough.

- Knead the dough until it's silky smooth and springs back when you push your thumb into it.
Rest the pasta for a couple of hours before rolling it or freeze it.

- To fill the pasta cut out circles (using a ravioli or cookie cutter), put about half a teaspoon of mixture just off the center of the circle.

- Then seal them using a trace of water around the outside of the circle. Be careful here to push out any air that's around the filling as this could cause your ravioli to burst while it's cooking.

- Dust them with flour to stop them from sticking together.

Cooking:

I froze my parcels on trays (and later transferred them to Ziploc bags) as I made them ahead of time but if you're cooking them fresh they will only need about 3 minutes in some salted boiling water. If you freeze them then they will take 4-6 minutes.

I made about 20 altogether but possibly could have squeezed out a few more with the excess dough if it hadn't been too dry to use. 

Serve with a simple sauce and marvel at the wonder that is homemade ravioli!