Making Ravoili with Three Gadgets
Yes, we are still here, at Kilmurry House. Just frantically busy, or at least the guys are. Trying to get everything ready to their the castings for their first jewelery catalog has been a rather frantic experience. Especially when most of the equipment has been high jacked by customs and no one is quite sure what the bond is going to be to get them out of jail. Everything is closed until Monday, so we have had all weekend for tempers to grow shorter and nerves to get more frazzled. In the midst of all this, The Fox and The Bear paid a visit. The Bear being able to distract the men some what and The Fox distracting me by suggesting a two day ravioli making project with her 1970's tuperware ravioli maker.
This sounded good to me, better than spending more hours arguing with my husband about how often his big male elk hound can take up residence in the kitchen. Since we can't let him out of the house yet, this problem is driving me nuts. The jewelery delay has delayed plans to close in the courtyard. Meanwhile, The Elk House Excavation Service has managed, after two years of digging, to destabilize the tree inside his pen. Said tree, is now being held up only by a couple of roots and the tree next door to it. Not a safe situation with the winds we have been having. But having to walk over two huge dogs, in a small space, is not safe for me either. Not when I'm carrying a pan full of boiling water or hot oil.
Negotiations on this subject are still in progress, though noticed that dog was put outside for the afternoon, after I suggested that if the dog stayed in all the time, husband could take over the cooking and kitchen maintainance...all of it. Dog went outside long enough for ravioli factory to re-open in the kitchen. Dog is now back in, after supper has ended. I can hardly wait for that courtyard....
Anyway, The Fox and I got out a couple of scary looking gadgets. And proceeded to experiment with "home-made" pasta. This was not exactly the sort of home production my best friend in California's Italian Grandmother would have recognized. Mrs. Petrachilli I pretty sure kneaded her dough lovingly by hand and then rolled it with a wooden rolling pin. Most likely a family heirloom with special designs cut in it to make the ravioli cut outs. We, were not the late Mrs. Petracelli. We did start with home raised eggs (our chickens are still laying, which is pretty amazing given the time of year and the state of their wet pen). Which we proceeded to bung into the electric bread baker, along with the cream, flour and salt. Then the bread baker took over and made the dough.
Now it was time to squish the dough through the non-electric pasta maker. A little machine that skilled Italians can use to rolls out enough pasta to fill a restaurant in an hour or two. However, I am not a skilled Italian....Our process took considerably longer. Though not the six hours our first noodle expedition required. We are getting better at knowing how much dough to put into the machine and how fast to turn it. And how to take the *bleeping thing" apart when it starts sticking and "eating" dough for no apparent reason. The first day, we rolled most of the dough to thin, which took a long time and resulted in ravioli that had to be baked. If we'd boiled it , it would have exploded all over the place. By today, the thinker noodles went a lot faster. But, before we had ravioli, we had to use the third gadget: a funky looking piece of orange plastic. You know, that very special color of orange so loved in the 1970's? The color that if you ever saw it in your orange juice you would know that a nearby nucular power plant must have exploded? Yep, that's the one. Bright, day-glow orange. Now, imagine a piece of plastic strips that color, with squares cut inside of it. Squares with ragged edges, sort of like a plastic, orange , egg crate; for square eggs. Attached is a small, orange spoon, that is supposed to be EXACTLY the right size for the filling.
Of course, being a 1970's product, bought by the Fox at a US auction, it has no instructions. So, we get to figure it out. A series of experiments shows that use of corn starch on the plastic is a good idea, to keep the little squares from sticking. I think to myself that gadget now looks like a day-glow orange juila with snow flakes on top. But refrain from saying anything...Next step is to place long noodles on top of egg crate...er..a...ravioli maker, then place fillings in drops on the middle of the squares. Finish, by brushing a SMALL amount of water (we discover what happens with too much water the hard way...mushy mess instead of squares) on bottom noodles. Finish by use of rolling pin on top of all the layers of noodles and filling. When it works, the rolling pin makes perfect little raviolis. I was amazed...
And then I thought of all the really funky, silly, rough looking ravioli chunks that I had eaten at "real" Italian restaurants. And I wondered, why if it is so easy to make almost perfect little ravioli's with a 1970's era piece of plastic, do good restaurants serve raviolis that look like a three year old's play dough experiment? And then, it hit me: THEY DO IT ON PURPOSE! Because they want you to really believe the stuff if home made. After all, if you made it look like perfect little squares, customers might think the restaurant had just gone done to the food warehouse and bought a bunch of frozen ravioli's like the greasy spoon on the other side of the street! I wonder if food warehouses have caught on to this and may even now be making funky "home-made" style frozen ravioli's for just this market? Or, perhaps, I really need to find other questions to think about and get a real life. And start thinking about other things than the shapes of tiny, filled, Italian pastries?
But, after two days of this, I find myself with pasta somewhat on the brain. That's both baked and boiled pasta... The result of all this hard work, along with some venison sausage ( frozen, but home made from a deer shot by the Wolf) homemade French bread and some sauce; made a wonderful dinner for ourselves and a couple of friends. We've even got cheese ravioli in the freezer for later. It was fun, it was exhausting and I don't think I want to do it again, at least for another couple of weeks. Sure, today was a lot easier than yesterday. Sort of like getting back up on a horse after it throws you off. But, as the Fox pointed out:
"Sometimes when you get back up on the horse you get a good ride, and sometimes you get a good kick in the butt."
I tired enough, I don't think I'll risk it right now. Instead, I think I'll make it a very early night.....
Sleep well everyone, I suspect I will....
Disaster Cat....who thinks tomorrow's menu may largely consist of leftovers...