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The Story
Little Al has managed to inherit a few of my more ‘difficult’ personality traits, but so far there’s been no sign of the calculated, scheming mischief that defined my own childhood. The prime stone against which I honed my blade of torment was my nonna. She did have pleasant diminutive nicknames for me, but my given names may as well have been ‘delinguente’ and ‘scustamato’ for their frequency and familiarity. The only reliable occasions for a truce were visiting my nonno at the cemetery (I needed her to lift me up so that I could kiss his photo), the imminent arrival of my mum to collect me up from her house (I needed her to hastily ‘make friends’ after a day of relentless wooden spoon pursuit), and making pasta. Ravioli was our signature dish, and it’s become the signature dish of our new little family.
You might remember the dough from our spinach fettuccine recipe, and the story that went with that. My nonna and I would make huge amounts of these ravioli to package up for the whole family, popping them out until we ran out of filling, and then making fettuccine with the leftover dough. It was a ‘cooking-by-touch’ sort of approach that’s left us now, through years of trial and error and habit, with the unusual serving size of three people. If you only need it for two and aren’t up for awkwardly splitting an egg yolk, either cut down the filling by a third and use the leftover dough for a two-person serve of fettuccine, or live a little and fill that bowl to the brim. It’s good pasta – you won’t regret it.
The Pasta
This is much like the fettucine dough, and obviously you can use either of these interchangeably. The only small changes I made for the ravioli were to slightly increase the amount of semolina to 00 flour (for a bit more hardiness, flavour, and bite), decrease the spinach (to lower the chances of any errant flecks getting in the way of the cutter), and slightly up the oil (for a little more silkiness).
For the dough, I recommend getting that spinach chopped fine or pureed if possible. Regardless of how you intend to stamp out your ravioli, having a smooth fleckless dough will make life much easier. The main points remain the same for almost all doughs that we make. After you’ve combined your ingredients, make sure that you knead it firmly for 10 minutes. Add flour if required, until it no longer sticks to anything, then leave it to rest in a freezer bag or cling wrap (or any air tight container) for 30 minutes.
Cut it into four pieces, rolling one at a time with the others remaining covered. This time around I rolled it with the manual hand crank machine to a thickness of 6 (this is probably thicker than most like it, but hey it’s my dinner). Make sure that you start on the thickest setting and work gradually to the thinnest. You can always step down and back up if your dough needs flouring and folding for the odd tear or two. I used to be lazy about my ratios, and use the thicker settings to finish the kneading and properly incorporate the spinach, but you’re creating more work for yourself and the end result won’t be as refined. If you’ve balanced your moisture well (see the spinach fettuccine recipe for more on this), it should be a straightforward one-directional climb up the thickness notches.
The Filling
This is a deliciously easy filling, particularly if you can use fresh ricotta. Again, make sure that the spinach is well chopped, and not too wet. Knead it together briefly. If you decide to use a piping bag, it’ll help to have it almost pureed, but then I enjoy the flavour of it flecked through the cheese, so it’s your call.
We use big fantastic red ravioli grids to cut our pasta. You can obviously use hand stamps, or even squash them with a shot glass and cut with a knife, but we eat a lot of pasta, and these squares turn out large amounts of beautiful ravioli with lovely saggy bellies (and I’ve been using them since I was tall enough to reach the pasta table). I love these things so much that I think I’ll have to write a separate blog post about them. For now, I’ll just say that if you want to make ravioli, these will fast become your best friend!
If you do use something like this (tell me about it in the comments!) just remember to flour it well. Once you’ve laid the floured bottom sheets, overlapping at the join, give them a light press to reveal the grid underneath and then spoon or pipe in small amounts of filling.
Spray a light mist of water over the bare pasta, then carefully lay the top sheets, again overlapping at the join. Be sure to not seal in large pockets of air, as they’ll cause the ravioli to break when you boil them. Then just flour the top, and roll nice and firmly to seal and cut. I don’t like to use wooden rolling pins because they get scratched up and can’t be used for rolling fondant (totally unrelated interesting story in itself). Instead I use old wine bottles. They do provide a slightly firmer pressure against the cutting edges, but the main advantage is that you can accidentally throw them out every week and be forced to buy more wine.
Once you can see the cutting edge clearly, peel off the excess, flip it over, and give it a bang. However you’ve cut them, lay them out on lightly floured baking paper, and stick them in the fridge or freezer immediately. If you’ve got urgent customers waiting on delivery like Little Al’s Ravioli Delivery Service, load them straight on to your cart and get pushing.
Use lots of water in a big pot to cook these. You don’t want to overcrowd them, and you don’t want that boil to vanish when you drop them in. Once they’re all floating nicely, give one a test and make sure you can’t see any white, but don’t let them go soft. Al dente or go hungry.
Pair it with a light sauce and let that flavour shine through. If you’re after something super quick to toss your ravioli through, check out the recipe for our light tomato and basil sauce!
This dish and tradition means a lot to us, so we hope that you enjoy it. Cook with care and love, and don’t forget the cheese!
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Pasta roller and cutter (if not using a rolling pin and knife)
- Kitchenaid pasta roller and cutter attachment (optional, instead of manual cutter or rolling pin)
- Ravioli tray (or stamps)
- Rolling pin
Ingredients
Dough
- 200 g 00 flour plus up to 80g for moisture left in the spinach
- 100 g semolina flour
- 80 g spinach blanched, pureed, and drained/blotted (substitute with defrosted frozen spinach)
- 2 eggs
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 tsp salt
Filling
- 400 g fresh ricotta
- 50 g spinach blanched, drained/blotted, and chopped (substitute with defrosted frozen spinach)
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan
- salt and pepper to season
Instructions
- Mix the flours together with the salt, and make a well out of them on a large flat surface, or in a bowl.
- To the well, add the 80g of pureed spinach, the oil, and the 2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk. For the single yolk, I recommend cracking the egg in half and then passing the yolk back and forth between the halves, allowing the white to fall loose.
- Starting in the centre, use a fork or your hand to gradually incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet. If you’ve already formed a ball of dough, but it remains sticky, keep adding flour at no more than a tablespoon at a time.
- Once the dough can be handled without sticking to your fingers or the work surface, begin kneading. You may have to keep adding some flour if it you notice it getting sticky during kneading – this is very much a step best judged by feel.
- To knead, I recommend putting your weight down and forwards into the dough using the heel of your hand. You are trying to roll it forwards and fold it over at the same time, so the motion is down, forwards, and then up at the end of the push. Fold the flattened dough back towards you and over itself as you repeat. You want 10 minutes of hard kneading to really develop the gluten.
- After 10 minutes, as long as you eliminated any sticking early in the knead, you should be left with a smooth, shiny ball of dough that requires no additional flouring.
- Seal it in a freezer bag, or any sealable plastic, and leave it to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Try to keep it out of direct sunlight or heat, as that will cause the dough to sweat.
- While the dough rests, make the filling by mixing all filling ingredients together in a bowl. Knead it lightly together; it should hold together without being too wet. If you want to make life easy for yourself, prefill a piping bag fitted with a medium round tip. Otherwise, filling with a teaspoon and your hands will work fine, but may take a little longer.
- Cut the dough into four pieces, and return to the bag all but the single piece you'll begin working on. Using a pasta roller, or rolling pin, roll out and refold the dough 4-5 times into long strips. Think of this step as an extension of the kneading process. If on a machine, just keep putting it through the 0 setting, refolding as you go. Flour lightly if you notice it sticking, and don't worry if you get some tears – just keep refolding to cover the tears, and rerolling with a light dusting of flour. You'll notice that the dough becomes easier to handle with every pass.
- Begin stepping up the settings on the machine, or if using a rolling pin, begin rolling thinner and thinner. I roll up to a machine setting of 6, but that's a personal preference, and it may be appropriate to go thinner. If you're rolling by hand, remember to aim for long rectangular strips with a similar width to what a pasta machine would make (about 30cm by 14cm); this will ensure you can cover a ravioli grid or tray if using one, or have enough room to stamp by hand. For a grid, you could also roll out 30x30cm squares.
- Flour one side of your sheets well – that will be the underside. If using a grid or tray, lay the sheet/s across it, with a slightly water dampened overlap to join any sheets together.
- On a grid or tray, give the sheets a very light press to show an outline of the mould underneath. If using a stamp, either make very light indentations in the dough, or gauge the required spacing. Fill each raviolo with a small amount of the filling. Spritz the exposed dough with water, then overlay an appropriate number of sheets to cover the tray, depending on the mould you are using. If hand cutting, you may find it more efficient to place your filling off-centre and fold the sheet in half over it.
- Flour the top of your pasta, and then begin cutting. If using a stamp, simply press down firmly over each filled mound; if using a grid or tray, roll firmly until the cutting/sealing edge is showing through. I use a wine bottle because I find that it cuts well, and I don't end up scratching up my rolling pin. Marble pins also work well, and if you have a dedicated pasta pin there's nothing wrong with that.
- Peel away any excess, and knock the ravioli free of the moulds. Separate if stamped. Transfer all ravioli to baking paper lined trays and refrigerate uncovered for up to a day. Making them the day before will give the pasta a satisfying bite.
- To cook, drop into a large pot of boiling water. The more water to pasta, the less chance you’ll lose the boil when you drop the pasta in. Once they’re all floating at the surface, try one and ensure that there’s no white showing in the bite. Be sure not to overcook after all that hard work!
- Looking for a sauce to pair this pasta with? We like to throw together a quick and simple tomato and basil sugo to pair with this relatively complex pasta – check it out!
My Family Loved it. I am definitely sharing Guys, Thanks For sharing this Great Recipe. this recipe and this website with my friend. Hope they also love it. Thank you again for sharing such a great recipe.
Thank you so much! I’m really glad to hear that. This is one of my favourite childhood recipes, and one that all of my family still enjoys. Very best wishes, Al & Al.