Co-cooking stuffed pastas: mushroom ravioli
There are two ways to make pasta: the right way (demoed by Paul) and the wrong way (demoed by me.) We made 4 batches of pasta, which could not be simpler.
Pasta
- flour
- 2 eggs
- 1.5 tablespoons olive oil
Put the flour in a bowl. Make a well in the center. Crack the eggs into the well, and pour in the olive oil. Muddle the egg mixture to break up the yolks. Then start incorporating flour.
The correct way to incorporate flour is to draw a bit in from the sides, and continue doing so until it’s relatively dry. The wrong way to incorporate flour is to mush your fingers through it, like you’re squooshing play-doh between your fingers.
Then, rest the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes, or until you’re ready to use it.
Rolling the pasta out
Bill Gonch tells me you can roll out pasta using a rolling pin. I don’t have one, so it’s lucky Paul has a pasta machine!
First, it basically needs to be kneaded. You do this by smushing and folding. Run the dough through on the widest setting (or roll to about a half an inch thickness), then fold into thirds, and repeat 20 or 30 times, until the dough has a very consistent texture.
Then, start reducing. A rolling pin user can tell me how you would do it that way; with the machine, you just run through, then reduce a size.
When you’ve reached your desired thickness, stop. For pastas being filled with a good amount of liquidy mushroomy goodness, we stopped at 7.
To seal the ravioli, we just surrounded those mushroom pockets with a little bit of water brushed onto the pasta sheet. Then, fold it over, and press the edges to seal. We moved ours immediately to the freezer to set them, while we moved on to the next 3 pastas!
