Italian Entree
BEEF RAVIOLI
INGREDIENTS – DOUGH
3 cups flour (about 1 cup more)
2 eggs (4 more eggs used later)
1 egg yolk
½ cup water or more
about 1 more cup flour (primarily for dusting)
INGREDIENTS – FILLING
6 garlic cloves (2 more cloves used later)
1½ pounds ground beef
1½ tablespoons parsley
6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
½ tablespoon salt (½ tablespoon more later)
3 eggs (1 more later)
INGREDIENTS – MARINARA SAUCE
6 Roma tomatoes
½ large white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons basil
½ teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon thyme
1 6-ounce can tomato sauce
INGREDIENTS – PASTA SHEET
flour for dusting
1 egg
INGREDIENTS – FINAL
water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
SPECIAL UTENSILS
no-stick pastry mat
rolling pin
hand crank pasta machine
square ravioli stamp
pastry brush (I used a 2½” square stamp.)
sonic obliterator
Serves 4. Makes 28 2½”-ravioli. (The amount of ravioli depends greatly on the size of the ravioli stamp.) Takes 3 hours 40 minutes.
PREPARATION – DOUGH
Combine 3 cups flour, eggs, egg yolk, and water into large mixing bowl. Knead with hands for 15 minutes. Make a ball of the mixture. It should be only slightly sticky and should just be able to come off your hand. If some of the ball sticks to your hand, then add a bit more flour, mix again, and try the new flour. If the flour ball is powdery, it is too dry. Add a bit more water, mix again, and try the consistency of the next ball. There may be a number of these iterations but they must be done. Divide dough ball into 4 equal mini-dough balls. Wrap mini-dough balls with plastic wrap and let sit in refrigerator for 1 hour.
PREPARATION – FILLING
While dough balls sit, peel and mince 6 garlic cloves. Put garlic, ground beef, Parmesan cheese, parsley, and ½ tablespoon salt in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until beef is no longer red. Put contents of frying pan into bowl. Add 3 eggs to bowl. Mix and put beef filling in fridge.
PREPARATION – MARINARA SAUCE
While dough ball cools in refrigerator, mince Roma tomatoes. Peel and mince onion and 2 garlic cloves. Add tomato, onion, garlic, basil, marjoram, oregano, ½ teaspoon salt, thyme, and tomato sauce to sauce pot. Cook ingredients on medium-high heat until it boils, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes with the lid on. Stir occasionally.
PREPARATION – PASTA SHEET
Dust no-stick pastry mat with flour. Remove mini-dough ball from refrigerator. Keep remaining amount in fridge until needed. Put this ¼ dough ball on pastry mat. Dust rolling pin. Roll out dough into oval shape 5½” wide and ¼” thick. (Anything thicker inhibits dough from going through hand-crank pasta machine.)
Use pasta machine’s thickest setting. (#1 on mine.) Hold dough vertically and straight as possible over pasta machine’s roller. Turn crank slowly to feed dough oval through roller. Fold resulting dough sheet in half. Cut about ¼” off each side to make it rectangular and thus easier to feed into roller. (This also makes for uniform dough sheets.) Run this folded sheet through roller.
Dust dough sheet. Set pasta’s setting the next narrower setting. (#2 on mine.) Feed sheet through machine. Repeat process, selecting a narrower setting each time, until final pasta sheet is about 1/16″ thick. (This would result from #8 setting on mine.) You should be able to see your hand behind the pasta sheet if you hold it up to the light.) Repeat for 3 remaining dough balls..
PREPARATION – RAVIOLI
Add 1 egg to cup. Blend with fork. Liberally dust pastry mat. Put pasta sheet on mat. Gently push 2½” square ravioli stamp into pasta sheet to make square outlines. Form 1 tablespoon meat mixture into a mound. Place meat mound in the middle of the square outline. (The meat mounds should be about 1″ apart.) Repeat until pasta sheet is covered with squares. Brush edges of squares with egg. (This keep your ravioli together.)
Place a 2nd pasta sheet over the 1st pasta sheet which is covered with meat mounds. Place ravioli stamp so that the meat mound is in the middle the of the stamp. Press down firmly enough to separate stamped squares. Press around meat mounds to seal them in place. Then press toward the edges to remove air pockets. (This helps ravioli to stay together and cook evenly.)
PREPARATION – FINAL
Fill pot with enough water to cover ravioli. Add 1 teaspoon salt and olive oil. Boil water. Add ravioli. Cook ravioli for 12 minutes or until tender, yet firm to the bite.(There can be quite a bit variation in time. Tasting is encouraged.) Drain and put ravioli in bowl. Add pasta sauce. Serve to adoring guests. Use sonic obliterator on unappreciative ones; you did a lot a careful work on this. Zap ‘em, zap ‘em, I say.
TIDBITS
1) If your sweetheart makes this dish for you, propose marriage immediately. You’ll never meet anyone more suited for you. Not ever.
2) Restaurant ravioli might or might not warrant a roll in the hay. But a permanent relationship, not really.
3) A homemade tossed salad earns you a kiss.
4) If you’re the salad your date serves comes with homemade dressing, upgrade the kiss you bestow to French.
5) No ravioli and no salad for dinner. What? What? Is the potential sweetheart stupid or oblivious? Favor your date with a perfunctory peck on the cheek and no more.
6) For, there are plenty of fish in the sea. And as for fish, may I suggest smoked tuna?
7) Anyone who owns a smoker is also quite the catch. As of press time 172,337, and counting, muli-decade marriages have started with a meal made with a smoker.
8) I wonder if there is such a thing as smoked ravioli. Well there is, sorta. You can use smoked cheese or smoked meat in the filling. But again, as of press time, there are no recipes for smoking entire ravioli.
9) But maybe, just maybe there will be. After all, we have landed men on the moon. We are even on the verge of landing astronauts on Mars. It stands to reason we’ll soon be smoking entire ravioli.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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