Flavoured Echoes

I need to make dinner in half an hour or so on weekdays, simply because, when I get home, I’m hungry. This can seriously limit what I can accomplish in the kitchen. What I am finding is that with prep on the weekend, it is possible.

I had made ravioli on the weekend and had leftover past dough (1 cup durum semolina, 1 egg, and water to mix) and ravioli stuffing (I’ll post recipe tomorrow). Tonight, I got a kitchen elf to remove the dough from the fridge a little earlier so it was room temperature when I got home and rolled it out in my hand-cranked machine to the setting of 7.  I boiled the water as I worked.

For two, we only need about 7 to 8 ravioli each for a meal.  Any more gets to be too much and you have to leave room for dessert!

The ravioli pockets were sealed using a finger dipped in water to make “glue”, folding over the other side of the pasta sheet  and pressing firmly to seal all sides.  I got to use my crinkle tool, some of the edges were a bit too close to I left them alone.  Nothing sadder than a ravioli deciding to explode in the pot while the water is boiling.

So it’s obtainable, a dish in 30 minutes.  I do think that after boiling the pasta, they should be shoved into a dish and smothered in pasta sauce and cheese and baked for another 20 minutes.

So why not make the ravioli and freeze it so it is ready to go?  I prefer it fresh and using a Sunday afternoon to make enough pasta dough to use all the ravioli stuffing is tedious and I’m just not that organized.  This is a solution that works for me.

On a somewhat related note, stopping to take photos with less than ideal lighting in the kitchen while cooking isn’t fun for me.  There are a number of food blogs I enjoy with awesome photos. Kudos to those who can accomplish this so I can read about all their step-by-step endeavors. I really do appreciate it!

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Here’s the recipe as adapted from Williams-Sonoma: Mastering Pasta Noodles & Dumplings.

2 tbsp. of butter
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
1/3 lbs. parmesan cheese
1/2 lbs. ground beef, crumbled
1/2 lbs ground pork, crumbled
1/2 tsp salt (kosher if you like)
1/8 tsp. ground pepper
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 large eggs
1/4 cup breadcrumbs

In a large frying pan, over medium heat, melt butter and add onion.  Cook until onion is tender.  Add the crumbled meat, salt and pepper, stir well and cook until the meat is no longer red and there aren’t any juices in the pan (10 minutes).  Add red wine and bring to simmer, cooking until the wine evaporates (2 minutes).  Remove the pan from heat and let the filling cool for a bit.

Scrap the meat into a food processor and pulse until finely chopped.  Add the 2 eggs and 1/2 cup of grated cheese and pulse until bended.  Finally, add the bread crumbs and pulse to blend.  Scrape the filling into a bowl, cover and chill the filling for at least an hour (or overnight).  This makes it a lot easier to work with.