Posts Tagged With: ravioli

Beef Ravioli

Posted on August 25, 2024 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

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BEEF RAVIOLI

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INGREDIENTS – DOUGH
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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)
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INGREDIENTS – FILLING
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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)
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INGREDIENTS – MARINARA SAUCE
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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
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INGREDIENTS – PASTA SHEET
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flour for dusting
1 egg
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INGREDIENTS – FINAL
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water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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no-stick pastry mat
rolling pin
hand crank pasta machine
square ravioli stamp
pastry brush (I used a 2½” square stamp.)
sonic obliterator
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Serves 4. Makes 28 2½”-ravioli. (The amount of ravioli depends greatly on the size of the ravioli stamp.) Takes 3 hours 40 minutes.
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PREPARATION – DOUGH
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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.
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PREPARATION – FILLING
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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.
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PREPARATION – MARINARA SAUCE
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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.
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PREPARATION – PASTA SHEET
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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.)
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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.
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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..
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PREPARATION – RAVIOLI
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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.)
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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.)
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PREPARATION – FINAL
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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.
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TIDBITS
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1) If your sweetheart makes this dish for you, propose marriage immediately. You’ll never meet anyone more suited for you. Not ever.
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2) Restaurant ravioli might or might not warrant a roll in the hay. But a permanent relationship, not really.
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3) A homemade tossed salad earns you a kiss.
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4) If you’re the salad your date serves comes with homemade dressing, upgrade the kiss you bestow to French.
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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.
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6) For, there are plenty of fish in the sea. And as for fish, may I suggest smoked tuna?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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– 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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What I Did Today

Posted on January 17, 2024 by pauldelancey

Ravioli punch hid for a long time

Busy, busy day. I’m exhaustedand hurting.

1) Woke up. Good start to the day.

2) Got up. Right away, Go me! The Energizer Bunny(tm), you bet.

3) Had a glazed doughnut for breakfast.

4) Showered again. There’s always time for cleanliness.

5) Dressed again and didn’t even go outside to the peoply world.

6)  Wrestled with finances again for a long time. The storm clouds gathered.

7) Did something. My mind’s mush from the day’s wrestling matches.

8) Started to pause and reflect. Realized I didn’t have time, so I stopped.

9) Looked for well over an hour looking for my ravioli punch. I had to take out all sorts of kitchen untensils out of the drawers and put them back. Hurt my pack from all this bending down and squatting and then getting up again.

10) Found my ravioli punch. It transpired that it was in the box with the pasta machine. I put the punch there because it was the most logical place for it to be. If there’s something like logic in the spirit world, tell it that I’m not happy with it.

11) Made ravioli. It’s a highly repetitive process that requires a fair amount of concentration. I also made ravioli sauce.

12) The ravioli turned out well, thank goodness.

13) Flour got all over me and the table.

14) Ate ravioli in minutes. Thank goodness, it was tasty.

15) Revised my ravioli recipe again. Although, I think it’s a keeper this time.

16) Briefly thought about estimating the total cost of ingredients and ravioli gizmos and the total time needed to get to the point where I am happy with my ravioli. However, my mind utterly recoiled at the thought. I’ll never again question the price of restaurant ravioli

17) Cleaned up a bit. Hooray, a native is cleaning up the rest of the mess.

18) I’m really in the mood for some murder mysteries.

Behave yourselves.

 

– 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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My Kitchen Gizmos – For Ravioli

Posted on August 17, 2023 by pauldelancey

Good heavens, ravioli sure taste yummy. Homemade ravioli are even tastier. But gosh, making the pasta for the ravioli completely by hand is so time time consuming and leads to pasta with uneven thickness. That’s why I like my ravioli gizmos.

Look at the picture below. The hand-crank pasta machine is second to the left. Feed pasta in at the top. Turning the crank will turn out a pasta sheet on uniform thickness. The extra attachment on the far left helps make spaghetti.

The ravioli mold is on the right. It yields 21 small and even ravioli. It also makes assembly much easier.

And remember, spending money of gizmos isn’t frivolous when the gadgets are for the kitchen.

Ravioli gizmos

 

– 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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Cheese Ravioli

Posted on January 7, 2023 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

CHEESE RAVIOLI

INGREDIENTS – PASTA

3 cups or more of flour (¼ cup more later in FINAL STAGE)
2 eggs
¾ cup or more water

INGREDIENTS – FILLING

¾ cup ricotta cheese
¼ cup grated, or chopped, mozzarella cheese
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon basil
½ teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
1 garlic clove

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 – FINAL STAGE

water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup flour

SPECIAL UTENSILS

rolling pin
cutting board

Makes about 40 ravioli.

PREPARATION – PASTA

Combine flour, eggs, and water. Mix with hands and 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. (If you suddenly feel like bowling, the flour ball is too heavy.) Add a bit more water, mix again, and try the consistency again. You might need to do this a number of times.

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on your cutting board and rolling pin. Roll flour ball out until it is NO THICKER than ¼-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 – FILLING

While rolled out flour dries, mince 1 garlic glove. Combine ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese, basil, salt, (First use of salt.) and garlic in mixing bowl. Mix with hands. Put cheese filling in fridge.

PREPARATION – MARINARA SAUCE

Mince Roma tomatoes. Peel and mince onion and 2 garlic cloves. Add tomato, onion, garlic, basil, marjoram, oregano, salt, (Second use of salt.) thyme, and tomato sauce to sauce pot. Cook on medium-high heat until mixture 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 cut 1½-inch wide strips in the flour. Cut these strips into rectangles every 3-inches. (Don’t use these rectangles while reading. They make disappointing bookmarks.) Dust strips with flour. Put a ½ teaspoon or so of the filling on the right side of the 1½-inch by 3-inches flour rectangle. Fold the left side over the filling. Push down on the open sides with the tines of the fork to seal the ravioli.

Fill pot with enough water to cover ravioli. Add salt (Third use of 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. (Now you know why restaurant ravioli are expensive.)

Meanwhile back at the range, cook pasta sauce in pot on medium heat until it is warm. Put ravioli in bowl and add pasta sauce.

TIDBITS

1) The singular form of “ravioli” is “raviolo.”

2) Scarcely anyone eats ravioli for breakfast.

3) But there is a ravioli burrito.

4) Oh my gosh, there is a lutefisk burrito.

5) Why?!! Why?!! Oh the humanity, oh the culinary carnage!

6) Horrors! There is such a thing as a lutefisk ravioli!

7) I think I need to sit down and have a nice, tall frosty mug of root beer.

 

– 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.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beef Ravioli

Posted on December 14, 2022 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

BEEF RAVIOLI

INGREDIENTS

PASTA

3 cups or more of flour (¼ cup more later)
2 eggs (1 more egg used later)
¾ cup water or more

FILLING

2 garlic cloves (2 more cloves used later)
½ pound ground beef
1½ teaspoons parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
1 egg

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

FINAL PREPARATION

water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup flour

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

PREPARATION OF PASTA

Combine 3 cups flour, eggs, and 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, and try the consistency of the next ball. There may be a number of these iterations but it must be done. (You don’t want to let all the Italianos and Italianas in the world down, do you?)

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on your cutting board and rolling pin. Roll flour ball out until it is 1/16″ or NO THICKER than ⅛”. 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. Put garlic, ground beef, Parmesan cheese, parsley, and ½ teaspoon 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 egg to bowl. Mix and put beef filling in fridge. (Time to sneak a nice, cold root beer or maybe something even stronger.)

PREPARATION OF MARINARA SAUCE

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 about 20 minutes with the lid on. (Although the Republic will stand if you chose to cook with it off, you wild child you.) Stir occasionally.

FINAL PREPARATION

Dust cutting board with ¼ cup flour. Use knife to cut 1½”- wide strips in the flour. Cut these strips into rectangles every 3 inches. Dust strips with flour. Put a ½ teaspoon or so of the filling on the right side of the 1½-inch by 3-inch flour rectangle. Fold the left side over the filling. Push down on the open sides with the tines of the fork to seal the ravioli.

Fill pot with enough water to cover ravioli. Add 1 teaspoon 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. (Pure gold is soft as well. However, it’s not a great ravioli ingredient. Gold’s extreme lethality in a molten state make using it an expensive culinary faux pas.)

Meanwhile back at the range, cook pasta sauce in pot on medium heat until it is warm. Put ravioli in bowl and add pasta sauce.

TIDBITS

1) This tidbit was traded for a second-round and a third-round tidbit in a future cookbook.

2) Flour is extremely flammable. You might want to sweep up spilled flour instead of vacuuming it. Flour mills make strong efforts to prevent flour dust from getting into the air and onto the floors. Metallic and coal dust are also quite flammable.

3) Indeed, the Germans in World War II tried to make thermobaric bombs by releasing coal dust in the air just before the Allied Air Force would make its bombing runs. The Germans planned to ignite the coal dust, but could never do so satisfactorily due to problems in getting the dust to disperse.

4) But if you had tons of coal dust and thousands of giant fans on the ground, I mean really huge, you could ignite the air around the enemy bombers with a powerful flare.

5) It might be hard to smuggle thousands of giant fans into an enemy city, though. Maybe if you did it at night.

 

– 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.

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Pizzaghetti

Posted on October 29, 2021 by pauldelancey

Canadian Entree

PIZZAGHETTI

INGREDIENTS – PIZZA CRUST

2 cups all-purpose flour (1 tablespoon more later)
¾ cup water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon active dry yeast
no-stick spray
1 tablespoon flour

INGREDIENTS – TOPPINGS

½ pound spaghetti
no-stick spray
1½ cups pasta sauce
½ pound sausage meat*
¼ pound sliced pepperoni*
2 cups mozzarella cheese

* = Substitute with your preferred toppings, if you like.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

bread maker
16″ pizza pan

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 50 minutes.

PREPARATION – PIZZA CRUST

Add flour, water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast to the bread maker. Do not put the yeast directly on top of the salt. Salt is bad for yeast and yeast makes the dough rise. “Ask not what your yeast can do for you. Ask what you can do for your yeast.”

Set the timer or the menu on the bread maker to “Dough.” Wait for the required time, maybe up to an hour. In the meantime preheat the oven to 400 degrees and liberally spray the pizza pan with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pan.

Take the dough out of the bread maker and roll it out until the dough covers the pizza pan. If you do not possess a rolling pin, any canned food can will do as long as it is at least six inches tall. Spray the pan and coat it with 1 tablespoon flour before spreading the dough.

PREPARATION – TOPPINGS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Read instructions for spaghetti on package. Subtract 3 minutes from the suggested time. (The spaghetti will continue to cook in the oven.) Drain.

Spray pizza pan with no-stick spray. Put pizza crust on pizza pan. Spread pasta sauce over entire crust. Make ½” sausage balls. Arrange sausage balls and pepperoni slices evenly over sauce. Distribute spaghetti evenly over pizza. Sprinkle cheese over everything. Bake pizza in oven at 400 degrees for 16 minutes or until cheese turns golden brown.

Note: This another version of pizzaghetti that simply has spaghetti and sauce served next to one or two slices of pizzas. To me, the version presented here is much more exciting.

TIDBITS

1) I must say that this is an exciting dish.

2) It’s so simple now, yet so many never had the wit to combine pizza with spaghetti.

3) But Patrice Grandchat did. Culinary financial analysts report that Mlle. Grandchat now has so much money that she’s about to launch a hostile takeover of AmazonTM. “I have a lot of things in my closets and attic that I’d like to sell,” said the billionaire Quebecoise.

4) I want to be as rich as Mlle. Grandchat. If I were that wealthy, I’d never have to think twice about spending ten cents on a recyclable plastic bag at the supermarket checkout stand. So, here are my forthcoming money-making food dishes.

A) PB&S: Peanut Butter and Steak. Simply slather your steak with peanut butter. There’s a version of this entree where the steak gets stuffed with peanut butter. This is the famous Stuffed PB&S.

B) Ravioli Burger: Substitute the meat patty in your burger with ravioli.

C) Camcowpigturducken: This is a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey inside a pig inside a cow inside a camel. Vegetarians are warned away from this dish. It’s also a diet-busting meal.

D) Taco Ice Cream: Who doesn’t love tacos? Who doesn’t love ice cream? I tell you, putting a crushed taco inside cream is a stroke of genius.

E) Roast Marshmallow Beef: It’s often called RMB by its legion of fans. Nothing’s more fun than roasting marshmallows over a campfire. And roast beef is the tastiest meat entree around. And what better way to get food fussies to eat their roast beef than hiding it inside a dessert?

F) Coke Dogs: Coca ColaTM is the world’s favorite soda. The hot dog is America’s most beloved meal. Simply boil your frankfurters in a pot of Coca Cola instead of water.

G) Bean Kabobs: Finally a way to grill beans! We never could before because beans would, of course, fall through the grill. But they won’t when they’re skewered between pork cubes and onion slices.

 

– 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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Recipe Pictures From Forthcoming Cookbook

Posted on November 28, 2012 by pauldelancey

From my cookbook.

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Spinach Ravioli

Posted on November 3, 2012 by pauldelancey

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.

Categories: cuisine, humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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