Ravioli della Bruna

Boil fresh spinach in water

So I am back in Italy for a bit now, in America I did not have any pasta or pizza for 11 days and I did not miss it!  But now that I am back in Italy I have little choice but to eat pasta, but eating pasta here is good, as I know it will always be cooked correctly, unlike outside of Italy. And one of my favorite pasta dishes is ravioli.  (For all those with short attention spans, this is a long post so be forewarned.  But the subject of ravioli is not one that can be short and sweet.)  This is step by step my mother-in-laws ravioli recipe.  I don't know how long she has been making it, but dare I guess at least 40 years as that is how old my husband, her youngest child is.....This ravioli is stuffed with spinach (fresh of course) and ricotta.  Obviously you can try your own fillings and follow these basic steps.  (I personally want to try a mushroom filling, but then I would not pair it with ricotta, you get my point.)  The amount shown here makes enough for 10 people, obviously it was just the two of us eating, but Bruna saved the rest in her freezer so she could just pop them out when she wants!

Take freshly cooked spinach and chop, here Bruna is using a mezzaluna to chop

Saute your chopped spinach in olive oil

Meanwhile have your ricotta in a strainer, draining excess liquid (pictured beginning of straining)

Ricotta after straining

Grate fresh nutmeg into grated parmigiano (or grana-padano)

Mix together sauted spinach with the ricotta

Add three eggs to the spinach and ricotta mixture

Add your grated cheese and nutmeg mixture

Finished filling

Now we begin to make fresh pasta, start with your flour and add eggs (normally recipes call for an obscene amount of eggs, like 3 for every cup of flour) Bruna doesn't agree with this as she thinks having that many eggs is gross (I agree) so here we have about 8-10 cups flour with 5 eggs

This was a surprise to me when she added some olive oil!

Now the mixing can begin, no utensils used here other then her hands, she worked the dough as you would with bread

This is what she ended up with after about 5 minutes, she did add a bit of water when she felt the dough getting too dry

She put the dough in the fridge for a few hours and then we took it out to roll the ravioli sheets out (let your dough rest in the fridge at least one hour)

One of Bruna's ravioli tins (I think these are over 40 years old)

Another very important tool, the pasta roller.  This attached to the side of the table and expedited the process of rolling out the dough to be thin sheets, (you could do this by hand with a rolling pin, but really you don't want to)

The pasta sheets are ready, now prep the ravioli mold with a sprinkling of flour (by the way you must have 2 molds on hand)

Spreading the pasta sheet on the mold

Putting spoonfuls of the spinach and ricotta filling on each square (these are heavy handed spoonfuls, but do it as you like your ravioli filling to pasta ratio)

Now you see the second mold in action (remember to lay your second pasta sheet on top of the filling)

Straight from the mold

A small roller is used to separate the squares created by the molds

As usual my dog, Luna is always underfoot waiting for food to fall on the floor, in this case a lot of flour

After you cut the excess dough off the sides of the ravioli squares you have a pile of "scrap" dough combine this and run it through your pasta press and make fresh long pasta as we did here

Getting ready to cook the ravioli, lots of salted boiling water (olive oil was added to this too) and a simple tomato sauce for on top (or you could do butter and sage instead)

Large plate with sauce on top

My portion....extremely buono!  Bruna made it look so easy!