The Militant Carnivore Cooks for his Vegetarian Wife

If you’re anything like my Lovely Vegetarian Wife, you love pasta.  In particular, you love fresh, homemade pasta in all its permutations:  gnocchi, orecchiette, lasagna, tortellini.  Homemade ravioli might be at the apex of this pasta pyramid.  Being able to create your own ravioli filling opens up whole new worlds of flavors, and the finished product is much, much better than anything that comes out of the refrigerator section of your local Safeway.

The downside is that making ravioli by yourself is kind of a pain.  With a group of friends, however, many hands make light work.  So this is not a recipe for a dish as much as the inspiration for a social gathering:  Invite over half a dozen friends, open a few bottles of wine, set out something to nibble on, and make some ravioli!

The dough is adapted from Mario Batali’s Simple Italian Food; the filling recipe, such as it is, is my own.  (In fact, when we had our own Raviolipalooza, we made two different fillings:  spinach and butternut squash.  Since you can fill ravioli with just about anything and most fillings keep well in the fridge or freezer, you can prepare half a dozen fillings well in advance and have a huge ravioli smorgasbord.)  The dough requires:

• 4 c all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs (we used 5 of our friends’ homegrown eggs)
• 1/2 t olive oil
• a pinch of salt

The spinach filling consists of:

• 2 bunches of spinach, washed thoroughly, heavy stems trimmed and discarded
• 1 c grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 1 T red pepper flakes
• 1 c pine nuts
• 1 egg

(Stay tuned for the butternut squash filling recipe.)

Start with the dough, since it needs to rest for a half hour before you roll it out.  All of the Batali acolytes say that, to make pasta dough, you have to make a mound of flour on a broad wooden cutting board, form a well in the middle of the mound, add the eggs to the well, and then slowly incorporate the eggs into the flour.  In my experience, this results in eggs and flour all over the floor, your shoes, your cat.  It’s not good.  Believing in better living through technology, I’ve started mixing my pasta dough in a bowl.  Even better:  I let my KitchenAid stand mixer (one of the Top Ten Tools In My Kitchen) do the work.  It comes with that dough hook for a reason.

So, put the flour in a bowl.  Mix the eggs, olive oil and salt together and add to the flour.  Using a stand mixer, a hand-held mixer or a fork, stir the egg mixture into the flour.  When it starts to become “doughy”, ditch the hand-held mixer or fork.  (Or let the KitchenAid do the kneading:  See above.)  Knead for 5-10 minutes until the dough is sticky and elastic.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.

On to the filling:  Put 2 inches of water in a big pot on the stove.  Insert a steamer insert (or, if you don’t have one, a metal colander) and cover.  Put over high heat until steam starts to come out.  Add the spinach, cover, and steam until the spinach is good and wilted, about 10 minutes.

Now, you need to extract as much liquid from the spinach as possible.  I start with my salad spinner.

Next, use a dish towel or some paper towels and squeeze the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed life out of the spinach.  I mean, really take out your pent-up aggression on it.  This is cooking as therapy.  Give it hell.

Once the spinach cries “Uncle!”, throw it in the food processor along with the other filling ingredients; add a hefty pinch of salt and several grinds of black pepper.

Pulse a few times until everything is well-combined.  Set aside.

On to the pasta:  I’ve rolled out fresh pasta by hand several times.  It is *hard work*.  Again, with a bunch of your closest friends and a lot of rolling pins, you could probably speed up the process.  But nothing beats a pasta machine.  And again—the KitchenAid stand mixer comes through like a champ!  If you have a friend with the Pasta Rolling attachment, you’re good to go.  (Thanks, Bearded Quaker.)

Divide the dough into 6 pieces.  Take one of the pieces, smoosh it flat, fire up the pasta machine on the widest setting, and run the dough through the machine.  Set the machine on a narrow setting, run the dough through again.

Repeat a few times until you get to the thinnest setting.  Spread the sheet of pasta dough out on a baking sheet and repeat with the rest of the dough.

Here’s where things get fun.  Spread a sheet of pasta dough out on a broad, clean surface.  Fold the pasta in half crosswise, then cut it in two at the crease.  This should give you two roughly identical sheets of pasta.  Spread a thick layer of filling evenly over one of the sheets, leaving a 1/2-inch margin on the edges, then put the other pasta sheet on top of the filling.

Now, this is a great place for a wonderful toy that The Outlier (aka, my mother in law) got for me the other day:  A ravioli rolling pin.  All you have to do now is roll the two sheets together.

The magic rolling pin forms perfect square raviolis with the filling trapped inside.

Trace the seams between the ravioli with another nifty toy, a crinkle ravioli cutter.

Voila!  You have spinach ravioli!

(Put any pasta scraps or trimmings into the fridge.  Save them for a light lunch or midnight snack.)

Put a pot of water on the stove, bring it to a boil, salt it, add the ravioli and cook them for about 3-4 minutes.  Serve with tomato sauce or with garlic butter, pine nuts and Parmigiano.