I love cooking, every day I cook fresh food for lunch and dinner for my family. The first year we were in the United Kingdom we missed Italian cuisine so much that I started to prepare traditional Italian food at home. It is funny that when I was in Italy I had never tried to make a traditional Italian first course such as gnocchi, ravioli or lasagne.
Today I share my fresh egg pasta dough recipe and how I use them for making ricotta and spinach Ravioli.
The first time I followed a recipe from a famous Italian food blog. I was so proud of the result… Unfortunately, I put layers of ravioli over layers and they all stuck together, impossible to separate them anymore… I had to trash all my work… At the end I share my tips on how to store the ravioli safely!
Fresh egg pasta dough
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 200 g of plain flour (type 00)
- 200 g durum wheat semolina flour
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Tools
- wooden board
- rolling pin
Directions
Place the flour on a board. Make a well in the centre (step 1).
Crack the eggs into it (step 2).
Beat the eggs with a fork until smooth (step 3).
Add the oil (step 4). Keep mixing with a fork.
Using the tips of your fingers, mix the eggs with the flour, incorporating a little at a time (step 5).
Knead for at least 10 minutes until our pasta dough will be a smooth and silky ball (step 6).
Wrap it in cling film (step 7) and let it rest at room temperature for at least half an hour before you use it.
Pasta dough is ready to be used! You can use it to make linguine, pappardelle, lasagne, ravioli, tortellini, cappelletti and maltagliati. Today we are going to make Ravioli!
Ricotta and spinach Ravioli
Fresh egg pasta dough used for an irresistible traditional Italian main course: spinach and ricotta Ravioli.
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 200 g of plain flour (type 00)
- 200 g durum wheat semolina flour
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 200 g spinach
- 250 g ricotta
- 70 g parmisan
- a pinch of grated nutmeg
- a pinch of salt
Tools
- pasta machine
- wooden board
- rolling pin
- ravioli cutter
- trays
Directions
For the fresh egg pasta dough, use the recipe described above. Use a machine to roll your pasta. Dust your work surface with flour, take a piece of pasta dough and make it flat with a rolling pin (step 1).
Set the pasta machine at its widest setting – and roll the piece of pasta dough through it (step 2). Repeat this process.
Roll the pasta dough through all the setting on the machine, from the widest to around the narrowest (for making ravioli I stop at the setting number 5). Pasta sheets are ready to be used (step 3)!
For the spinach and ricotta filling, wash the spinach and put them in a saucepan, with no water. Cook for 5 minutes or until wilted. Remove from the pot and drain. Squeeze them to drain any moisture, then finely chop (I use a mixer). Mix all of the filling ingredients with the spinach – ricotta, parmesan, nutmeg and salt – until well combined (step 4).
To make the ravioli, on a pasta sheet place a heaped teaspoon of the ricotta mixture at equal intervals along the pasta (step 5).
Wet a little bit with your fingertips around each filling then lay another pasta sheet on top (step 6).
Carefully press down around each filling ball to remove any air (step 7).
Cut in squares (4 x 4 cm) with your ravioli cutter (step 8).
Tips
- Take care to let the air escape between one raviolo and the other, pressing around the filling with your fingers, this is to prevent them from being opened during cooking.
- To cook the ravioli bring some water to the boil with a good pinch of salt. Drop the ravioli in to the water in small batches and cook until they float to the surface.
- It is possible to store ravioli in the freezer for up to 1 month. To freeze them proceed as follows: put the ravioli in a tray sprinkled with flour (ONLY one layer) and put the tray in the freezer for a couple of hours until the ravioli have hardened. Then put them in freezer bags. To use them, cook them still frozen.
- If you have pasta leftovers, you can use it for making “maltagliati”, romboids perfect for soups!
- This recipe is enough for 100 ravioli.
CraftyMessyMom’s Maths Cookies
KIRFs: multiplications, fractions
- If I put 6 ravioli in 4 rows in a tray, how many ravioli we have iin total?
- If I have 4 trays how many ravioli we have in total?
- If we eat 3/4 of the ravioli, how many are left for freezing?
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Crafty Messy Mom 