Thursday, September 25, 2008

Basta Pasta

Who knows what brought on this pasta field day, but here I now stand with oodles of funky-shaped noodles. (Specifically: sweet-potato ravioli and some cavatelli for good measure.)

I have yet to boil the little buggers - which I am somewhat hesitant to do for fear that they'll disintegrate and prove once and for all that I am not and will never be La Maestra of my kitchen elements - but once I do, I would like to share them. So, if you're in or around NYC, please help me eat my raviolis! Can't you hear them calling out to you, with their tiny dough-pinched voices?? "Meeee...eat meeeee."

Okay, freaky personification of this pasta aside, here's how I did done it:

- Sift together 1 cup semolina flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary.

- Make a well at the center and add in 3 egg whites or 2 eggs, well-beaten. Gradually incorporate the flour from all sides of the bowl into the wet middle with a fork. When the dough gets too stiff to mix with a fork, dig in with your hands and start gathering it into a ball.
- Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead the dough until smooth, just 1 minute or so. Then cut the ball in half and roll each piece out thin (but watch that the edges don't get too thin), to about 1/8" thickness.

-Meanwhile (I know, I'm a pain): peel and quarter one large sweet potato and put on the stovetop with water to cover, plus: a tbsp. of maple syrup, a squirt of lemon juice, a tsp. of nutmeg, and some salt. Bring to a boil and continue to simmer, covered, for 15-20 minutes, till tender. Drain off liquid, transfer to a bowl to cool, and mash with some olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. "This is the filling!" proclaimed Captain Obvious, dutifully.

- Now turn to the rolled-out dough once more (this is the fun part!): brush it with water so that the dough sticks to itself, and space out heaping teaspoons of the filling on the two slabs of dough until you've run out. With a sharp knife, cut out the pieces of dough surrounding the filling and roll the dough into raviolis however you please. Here's one example:

Yep, it's hamantash-shaped ravioli. Happy New Year?? Whatever...

- Continue rolling and pinching the dough
into weird shapes around your dollops of filling. Let the raviolis dry for at least 30 minutes until boiling them in salted water for 5-8 minutes. Enjoy simply with butter and freshly ground pepper, or go wild and make zucchini-miso pesto (random idea. might be gross. I'll let you know.)






Et...voila! You are now a ravioli rockstar.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

mmm! i really like the photos in this one : )

mmm ravioli.

Unknown said...

Eve, you lost me at "meanwhile"... LOL!

Unknown said...

Hehe. I think I need to put my blog entries on a diet!

xo ~ E