Ravioli

My wife is not one to let practicality get in the way of a good meal. While helping our two year old make some shapes with playdoh, she got the idea to make ravioli for supper. And not "take the frozen ravioli out of the freezer", but "make them from scratch". While dealing with 4 month old twins (hence the impracticality of the idea). So, while the kids were all down for their afternoon nap, she started on the project.

Out came the pasta maker, pasta dough was made, filling was decided upon, one then the other, then the other of the children woke up, and amidst the increasing mayhem, a couple of dozen raviolis were produced.

 Once supper time rolled around, we boiled them up, covered them with some sauce that we had previously made, and much tasty pasta was had (actually, we only cooked up 1/2 of it - the rest has been frozen and will make another meal).

For those of you who may be inclined to try this for yourselves, here is the recipe:

Filling:

1 small onion

1 cup grated zucchini

1 cup swiss chard

1 1/2 red pepper (chopped)

1/4 cup parmesan

2 tbsp pesto

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 egg

Sweat the onions, and then add the rest of the vegetables in a saucepan. Cook on medium heat until the red pepper is softened and all of the liquid is evaporated.  Add the parmesan and pesto after taking the pan off the heat.  Season to taste.  After the filling has cooled add one egg and stir to incorporate.

Pasta Dough:

2 2/3 cup Flour

4 Eggs

1/4 tsp Salt

Once assembled, boil for 10 minutes

Sauce:

1 lb ground beef

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 cup grated zucchini

1/2 red pepper

1/2 cup red wine

1/3 lb mushrooms

2 quarts tomatoes

spices (oregano, bay leaf, salt, pepper etc.) to taste

From a local eating view, the swiss chard came out of our garden (free), the zucchini was either out of our garden, or from the market ($6 for a very large zucchini) as was the red pepper ($1.95/lb). All were bought or picked at the height of the season, and frozen. The tomatoes in the sauce were bought in 20lb boxes ($7 / box) from a local farm and canned. The beef was part of the 1/2 cow I previously mentioned. The flour for the pasta was from a local milliner (price tbd), the eggs were the "free range" from the grocery ($5.45/doz from the store, since our $3.00/doz local farm source unfortunately stopped selling "at the farm door", and we've not found another source yet). The garlic and onions were from either the market, or from a local organic place ($2 / garlic head).