Making Homemade Pasta For the First Time

My sister-in-law gave us a pasta-making attachment for our kitchen aide mixer for Christmas. It was a complete gift including a pasta-making cookbook, drying rack, ravioli forms, and three attachments for the mixer.

Last Wednesday, we perused the cookbook and decided on an egg-based ravioli filled with a cheese and basil mixture. The basil was from my own plants, which I’d been keeping for Caprese salads this summer.

We also made homemade red sauce from a recipe my husband uses often. It’s delicious. After a quick trip to the local IGA in a very small town (less than 1,000 people live there) we were set to go. Unfortunately, the IGA is closing so I will be living in a food desert in the very near future. Although I don’t expect to be severely affected by the IGA’s closing, it might cause food insecurity for others in the area.

In any case, we got back to the house and were ready to cook! My job was to make the filling for the ravioli. It was pretty easy. My son’s job was to make the pasta. For some reason, my kitchen aide mixer did not like the palate attachment and liked the hook even less. So, my son ended up kneading the dough by hand.

After the dough sat in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, we were ready to make the pasta! For our first time, it went well. We discovered we had to move faster and use less flour in making the sheets of pasta. We were too diligent at first. After we both got to make sheets that were as thin as possible, I got to cut out the ravioli. First, I used a hand cutter that singly cuts round ravioli. There were large and our filling was not made in the correct size to fill them. Instead, I turned to the form we had received as a gift.

What a difference the form made! It was easy, efficient, and made uniform square ravioli that was filled with the right amount of filling we had set aside (according to directions).

We made two dozen square ravioli and five large round ravioli.

Next, we had to cook them! Cooking is fast! 2-3 minutes and they were done! Luckily, our homemade red sauce was done too! I’m proud to report that none of the ravioli burst while cooking, either! It was fun and delicious! I’m looking forward to experimenting with pasta-making some more!

The delicious meal was followed by a common Italian Digestif – Limoncello.

Mangia bene!

Ciao!