Italian Entree
SPINACH RAVIOLI
INGREDIENTS
PASTA
3 cups or more of flour (1/4 cup more later in FINAL STAGE)
2 eggs
3/4 cup water or more
1 tablespoon olive oil (1 tablespoon more used later)
1 teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
FILLING
2 garlic cloves
1/2 pound fresh spinach
1 1/2 teaspoons parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
MARINARA SAUCE
6 Roma tomatoes
1/2 large white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons basil
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 6 ounce can tomato sauce
UTENSILS
rolling pin
cutting board
FINAL STAGE
water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil (1 tablespoon more used earlier)
1/4 cup flour (3 cups more earlier in PASTA)
Makes about 40 ravioli.
PREPARATION OF PASTA
Combine flour, eggs, and cup water. Mix with hands. Make a ball of the mixture. It 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, until the consistency of the next ball is just right.
Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on your cutting board and rolling pin. Roll flour ball out until it is NO THICKER than 1/4-inch. Frequently sprinkle the rolling pin to keep the dough from sticking. Let rolled-out flour sit for AT LEAST 4 hours. It should be nearly dry.
PREPARATION OF FILLING
While rolled out flour dries, peel and mince 2 garlic cloves. Dice spinach. Put garlic, spinach, parsley, Parmesan cheese, and salt in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Put contents of frying pan into bowl. Mix and put spinach filling in fridge.
PREPARATION OF MARINARA SAUCE
Mince Roma tomatoes. Peel and mince 1/2 onion (Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy a 1/2 onion at the store?) and 2 garlic cloves. Add tomato, onion, garlic, basil, marjoram, oregano, 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 about 20 minutes with the lid on. Stir occasionally.
FINAL PREPARATION
Dust cutting board with flour. Use knife to make 1 1/2-inch wide strips in the flour. Cut these strips into rectangles every 3 inches. Dust strips with flour. Put a 1/2 teaspoon or so of the filling on the right side of the 1 1/2-inch by 3-inch flour rectangle. (Did you know there is cutting board that has all sorts of measurements and angles on it if you want to make an exact 1 1/2-inch square ravioli? You can order it on line.) Fold the left side over the filling. Push down on the open sides with the tines of the fork to seal the spinach ravioli.
Fill pot with enough water to cover ravioli. Add salt and olive oil. Boil water. Add ravioli and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Ravioli should float to the top and the dough should be completely soft.
While your ravioli boils itself to perfection, cook pasta sauce in pot on medium heat until it is warm. Put ravioli in bowl and add pasta sauce.
TIDBITS
1) There are a lot of Italians in Italy.
2) There are a lot outside Italy as well. This is why Italian cuisine is so easy to find.
3) But Caesar’s salad isn’t Italian. This salad is often considered to be American though it was actually first made at Caesar’s Hotel in Tijuana, Mexico.
4) I recently went to a dentist in Tijuana for my teeth. Dentist’s in Mexico are much cheaper than in America. Caesar’s Hotel was only a block away.
5) The savings from seeing the Mexican dentist vastly outweighed the cost of the meal.
6) Indeed, there are “surgery” cruises and vacation packages to Mexico. People enjoy the cruise ship, the sights of the Mexican ports, and have a surgery for less than the cost of the same surgery in the United States.
7) There are a lot of ordinary American tourists in Mexico as well.
8) And there are certainly a lot of Mexicans in Mexico.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
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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