Homemade Ricotta Ravioli

You know that saying that's like "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans"? That's how I feel about these raviolis. He was laughing at me before I even had my biscuit cutter packed.

Ravioli is the kind of thing that I only want to eat freshly made in the home of someone's Italian grandmother, if not my own. To the sage-butter butternut squash ravioli that appears on every restaurant menu come fall, I respect you, but you aren't for me. This is also not a project you want to take on for just yourself on a casual Tuesday night. Though if that's your style, I'm into it.

We decided to make these together, planning to spend a few days cooking and photographing, getting ready to make our blog live (hey! we out here.) I was pretty confident in our pasta making skills going into it, but I was very quickly humbled. Here's a few lessons I came away with:

1. Handcutting and shaping anything, especially fresh pasta dough, takes excessive patience. Are you also laughing at us? I hope so.

2. Maybe calm down about needing your ravioli to look rustic. A press might not have been the worst thing.

3. Don't use homemade ricotta for ravioli. I sometimes fall victim to wanting everything to be from scratch, but this is not a time to really appreciate cheese you made yourself. This is a time for Sargento.

4. Cocktail breaks can vastly improve ravioli production.

Even though we had to course correct, and they're not the most beautiful ravioli you've ever seen, we were pretty happy with the taste of the final product, keeping them simple with some of our red sauce, a little olive oil & some parmesan. Despite the multiple failures (we know better than to stack layers of pasta dough near the stove, but we can't always be our best selves), this was a recipe that was definitely worth the effort. We may have been eating them by hand. Blame lesson #4.

Welcome to 3 sisters eat.  

| Amanda

Pasta Dough

Yield - 1 lb

3 large eggs, beaten to blend

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. kosher salt

Mix eggs, flour, oil, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer with your hands until a shaggy dough forms. Knead with dough hook until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rest at least 30 minutes.

Ravioli

Filling

2 cups whole milk ricotta

1/4 cup chopped parsley

kosher salt & pepper to taste

1 egg, for wash

Roll dough out with pasta roller, or by hand if you're ambitious. Using 2 inch pasta cutter, cut individual circles. Use egg wash around the border of each circle. Place dollop of filling onto circle, and cover with opposite half. Using a fork, seal edges firmly. Boil water, salt with kosher salt, and cook ravioli 2-3 minutes (they will float to the top when they're done!) Top with whatever your heart desires.