Making ravioli

Filling the ravioli mold

Over the weekend, I got it into my head that I needed to make ravioli, and bake bread, at the same time. (Well, strictly speaking I didn't plan that both had to be at the same time, it just happened that the time I did one was also the time I had to do the other). Now, in the past we have tried to make ravioli, and not had much success. Either the filling was too wet, or the dough too sticky, or some such thing. So this was kind of my last-ditch attempt - if I couldn't get it to work this time, I was going to give up on fresh pasta ravioli and just use won ton wrappers. For this final attempt, I used Mark Bittman's recipes (egg-less pasta dough and filling) from How to Cook Everything.

Ravioli successfully released from the mold!

 For whatever reason - maybe I was more careful, maybe the different dough recipe I used was less troublesome - the ravioli worked perfectly. In the picture above you can see my ravioli mold.  It has little cups where the filling goes, and wavy ridges around the edges.  You take the little rolling pin and roll between each piece of ravioli, on top of the ridges, and that helps to separate each piece.

Such lovely, delicious little dumplings...

I think my dough was a little too thick for the ridges to cut all the way through, but I just used the pizza roller to do the final cut. They looked perfect, just like the ones at the store, but without preservatives and extra unnecessary ingredients.

Sprinkled with cornmeal to keep them from sticking - marginally successful.

In all, the recipe made two cookie sheets worth of ravioli. Enough for 4 or 5 people. I served them with a quick homemade pasta sauce and fresh bread.

The loaf on the left barely made it to Monday morning. It is gone now.

 And so, now that I have successfully made ravioli, I am eager to repeat the experiment. Maybe a sausage filling, or pumpkin. Yum.