PASTA!

It has been to long since I have last blogged. I have been a little stressed lately and couldn't find the time to put up a post. The first day of summer I got into a wreck and I found out yesterday that my car that I LOVE was totalled. So today I had to go get all my stuff out of it and I cried. My mom and I pulled up to it and my car just looked so sad. I have been depressed all day and I also have been looking online for cars with my parents all day as well. You would think it would be fun, its not.

On to the PASTA! I have a passion to really learn how to make food. I want to travel and learn from native Italian, French, and Indian people. I want to go to the "roots" of where the food started and learn how to really make it. Of course that it my dream, so I had to stick to the books on this one. I looked in all my moms recipe books and I researched how to make homemade pasta. I wanted to perfect the method. My mom has a fantastic pasta maker that she lets me use and I love it! I decided to make ravioli and also make a tomato sauce. The dough for the ravioli is really easy but rolling it out is when you have to be patient. With making pasta I founds out that the first thing you need is patients.

Ravioli Dough
Serving size: 4

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large egg yolks
6 tablespoons (or more) water
5 teaspoons olive oil

Mix flour and salt in a medium bowl; make shallow well in center. Add egg yolks, 6 tablespoons water, and oil to well. Using fork, whisk water, egg yolks, and oil. Gradually work in flour from around egg mixture to form crumbly mixture. Knead in bowl until dough comes together, adding more water by 1/2 teaspoons if dry. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Divide into 4 equal portions. Cover with plastic wrap; let rest on work surface for 30 minutes.
When the dough has rested take 1/4 of the dough and run it through the pasts machine on the biggest setting. Do that a couple of times and keep moving up the setting of the pasta machine so it get really thin. You want very tin dough. Once it is rolled out enough place about a tablespoon of your filling, use egg wash around the filling as a glue for the cover pasta and cover with another sheet of pasta. Cut the pasta (I used a pizza cutter, its just easy) and then press firmly with a floured fork so no water with get in. Set aside until the BIG pot of salted water is boiling. Homemade pasta cooks faster so once they have been floating on the top of the water for about 2 minutes, they are done! Serve with your favorite sauce! It sounds difficult, but give it a shot! You will want to keep making pasta, trust me!

My filling for the ravioli was ricotta cheese, mushrooms, and spinach. I found a recipe for homemade tomato sauce and I also added meat into sauce since the filling didn't have any. You can really put anything with this pasta. It has a great texture and when it is cooked, it has great flavor.