I want to start this entry off with an invitation to all of the people that think they know how to cook Italian food, or their great aunt whatshername makes "The best meatballs and gravy ever". The fact is that most Italian dishes are rustic, simple peasant like meals that were made with ingredients that are cheap or easily available. That being said, it is still my favorite style of food to cook. I have had long drawn out discussions with so many people about food from the north, food from the south, the types of tomatoes used, is it sauce or is it gravy? (Sorry folks but cooked tomatoes will always be sauce, If you add some sort of meat to the tomatoes while its cooking then I guess you can call it gravy). The bottom line is, regardless where any of your ancestors are from, good food is the only objective here. (My family comes from Naples, so we know everything lol).
This is a simple recipe for making ravioli and tomato sauce from fresh garden tomatoes (not pre cooked in a can), and some flour and water. The first thing is the "sauce". I found the best way to get the most out of your sauce is to dice up 3 or 4 tomatoes and get them into a pot with two finely chopped garlic cloves and a tablespoon of fresh basil. The next step is a bit of a short cut, but you get the same result faster. Now I have had some of my friends make fun of me for using this product and some that praise it as I do, but for years now I have used the "Magic Bullet" in my kitchen with no issues what so ever. I also have recently been using the "Bullet Express" which is the larger machine that is more like a food processor. Regardless of what you use, now is the time to throw as many tomatoes into your food processor as you can and crush them into a nice thick raw sauce. You can also add any other seasonings into the processor to save some time. I will stick with the herbs and spices I added earlier. Now add your raw sauce into your sauce pot, mix and let it simmer. You can cook out your tomatoes for about one and half hours due to the fact that they are fresh and not pre cooked in a can.
Now comes the fun part... Time to get floury, is floury a word? Anyway, the first thing you need to do, is make sure you have the room or counter space to roll out your dough, or else this could end up taking a real long time. Step 1. Mix your flour with water. Step 2. Chase whoever is near you around the house with your gooey swamp monster from a Scooby Doo cartoon looking hands and howl at them in a ghost like manner... You can skip step 2 if you like. You should mix you flour and water sparingly. If you over work the dough you start to create a higher levels of gluten, and will make your pasta a bit tougher. So the key is to lightly mix the two components together until all the flour is incorporated into the ball of dough. Some of you may have noticed that I never mentioned using eggs in my flour mixture...That's because its a summer ravioli, the egg would make the dough too heavy and dense. So to lighten the noodle you just use water. Out of a five pound bag of flour, I used about half for my dough. That rendered about 200 2 inch ravioli, with a big ball of dough left over (about 100 or more in that ball). That should be more than enough for any family. Now let the dough rest for about twenty minutes, this gives you time to apologize to any one you chased around the house, stir your sauce, have a glass of wine(your gonna need it). Now you can make the filling. The filling that I used for this dish is sticking with the summer theme. It's a mixture of ricotta cheese with grilled chicken, fresh basil, and lemon zest. The chicken should be shredded so it can be incorporated into the cheese without it being too lumpy. Now you can use any form of chicken you want. For this recipe I used two rotisserie chickens. They are easy to work with and have minimal fat, so you can use most of the bird and not have any greasy nastiness affect the filling. You can use both the white meat as well as the dark meat in your cheese mix. Finely dice up 1 cup of fresh basil(you can add some more if you like). The zest of two large lemons and the juice of one half lemon, and mix everything together. Cover and let the mixture set.
Okay,you have your sauce simmering, your cheese filling is mixed and the dough has been resting long enough. So, LETS GET READY TO MAKE RAVIOLI!!! That should wake the dough up a bit. First and foremost... Don't forget your flour. You have to flour everything. Your table, your rolling pin, your hands, your friends, your rolling pin again and again. It is of the utmost importance that the dough does not stick to anything. For years now, I have been using a plastic mold for folding the ravioli. The mold is a circle cutter on the bottom and it bends in half on the top to fold the little dough disc you just cut. These types of plastic cutters/fold and press devices are sold in most cooking stores. I also in the past have done the manual fold over technique, as well as the two sheet method , which is when you roll out a long sheet of dough, set your filling in individual little mounds all over the sheet, salt and water around the mounds...(I will explain the salt and water in a bit). Then roll out another sheet, place it on top of the first sheet and the mounds, manually press around the mounds, use a round cutter, add more salt and water along the edges, use the tines of a fork to further press in the edges of the ravioli and create a design pattern. That my friends is ludicrous. Now I know that before there was any form of advanced cooking technology, this is how it was done, but we live in the modern world, so use your gadgets if you got em. Now I can't tell you where the salt and water concept came from, but that method was taught to me to ensure that the edges of the noodle don't come apart. If you know the two spoon technique, then this will make sense to you. If you don't this might sound stupid, but I will explain it as best I can. The only way to truly understand it, is by trying it. The concept is simple, you use a spoon to scoop up the cheese mixture and use the second spoon to shape the mix into a more rounded mound. This will give an even amount of filling every time. You could also use an ice cream spoon if you are making larger ravioli.
Place the filling closer to one edge as opposed to the center of your disc so its easier to fold. With a small brush or your finger rub a small amount of the salt and water mix around the edge of the disc and fold. PRESTO!!! You just made a ravioli. Now repeat this 199 more times!?!?!?. Now fresh pasta cooks really fast, so make sure your water is boiling, and remember to season your water with salt, pepper, and anything else you want to add...(It's the last chance to give the pasta any flavor of its own before adding the sauce). The ravioli will float to the top of your water in about two to three minutes. Now since we have gone to all the trouble to make ravioli and sauce from scratch, it would be a bloody shame to just dump sauce over the cooked noodles and call it a day, wouldn't it? When you get a pasta dish in a restaurant, it is usually finished in a saute pan. You remove the pasta from the boiling water and place it in a hot pan while adding sauce. This technique is used to marry the flavors of the pasta and the sauce. It completes the dish. Again it would be a shame after all this work to just have an incomplete, lackluster dish, due to skipping what is in my opinion one of the most important steps if not the most important step in this whole process. I finished the dish with some grilled chicken breast, grilled broccoli. You can add any other protein you like.
A little side note ....
I wasn't planing on making this dish at all, when my wife turns to me in the market and asks if I feel like making fresh ravioli. That was at five o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. We ate at at eight thirty that night. It may seem like a long time, but considering the amount of food being made from scratch, I'd say that it was worth it.
This meal may seem a bit overwhelming to someone that has never made fresh pasta before, but the truth is... It takes a lot of time, it is physically demanding, and it can become frustrating for a myriad of reasons, but there is nothing that you can create in your kitchen that is any more rewarding than this meal. Sure it may take some time, but its all worth it when you and your family sit down to eat what you hand crafted for them.
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