Hey, it's the weekend, and we are once again sharing recipes with the BananaTUDES! group! For this week's recipe, I have to give the backstory first.
My husband and I met in 2010 (via e-Harmony) and after conversations on line, and on the phone, the next "checkpoint" was to meet in person. So our first date was set, and we were meeting at a restaurant somewhere between both our homes. Needless to say, the date went great, because we are married (duh), but here's the "hunt" part of this post.
Our first date was at an Italian restaurant that had all sorts of interesting dishes. One of them was beet ravioli. I was in the mood for pasta, but at the time, wasn't a big fan of beets. So I asked the server for his take on the beet part of beet ravioli and he insisted I'd love it. He said it was a little sweet, and you couldn't actually taste beets. So I tried it, and it was delicious.
Fast forward to now, 15 years later. I've been thinking of that dish lately, and wondering if I could recreate it. And the restaurant never responded to my request for information on the recipe. So I am trying to make it myself. My first attempt was terrible. I tried a ravioli with a beet filling but it was too mushy and soggy and didn't cook well and didn't taste all that good either.
But this weekend, I tried again. This time, I made a regular cheese ravioli, but put tiny beet pieces in the pasta dough. I thought that might work. And instead of my normal tomato sauce, I decided to use a brown butter sauce. And the meal was much better this time than the first time around. In fact, if any ActiveRainers try to make it, they'd be happy with the meal. That being said I think next time I'll just use beet juice instead of beet pieces.
So here's how I made it:
Pasta Dough
The dough recipe is good for two meals - you can freeze the unused portion. I used 3 cups of pasta flour and four eggs and mixed them all together in a bowl, adding a tablespoon or two of water until it came together. Then I mixed in the beet pieces (boiled a beet until soft, let it cool, chopped it up, put the pieces in the food processor and ground to bits). And then I kneaded the dough for about 5 minutes, rolled it into two balls, wrapped in plastic wrap and threw in the refrigerator for a few hours. I admit the red color might be a little off putting for some but it turned pink when cooking. Maybe that's weird too but this isn't about presentation! Just about taste!
Ravioli Filling
These directions can be used for any kind of pasta dough - it's for a regular cheese ravioli filling. In a mixing bowl, add the following ingredients: 2/3 cup whole milk ricotta, 1/3 cup grated parmesan, 3 ounces grated mozzarella, few twists of salt and few twists of pepper (or 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon). Stir it all together until it's all blended.
Putting them together
If you have a pasta maker of any kind you can use that to make the dough as thin as possible. Then lay it out in a strip, put a tsp of filling in a mound at regular intervals, lay another sheet of dough on top, push down around the mounds and then use a serrated blade to cut in between the mounds of dough. I have a tool that makes it a lot easier, but you can do it this way and it'll work fine. If you don't have a pasta maker, you can roll the dough out with a rolling pin to your desired thickness. This recipe makes between 24-30 raviolis. Once these are ready and it's almost time to eat, boil water in a pot, put the raviolis in the water in bunches and when they rise to the top of the boiling water and have been there for a minute or so, you can use a slotted spoon to move them to a serving bowl. At the same time, you can make your sauce.
The sauce
There are a lot of different sauces you can use, but I decided to make a brown butter sauce. I didn't want the tomatoes in tomato sauce to overwhelm the beet flavor. So to make the sauce, I cut a 1/2 cup stick of butter in pieces, threw it in a pan and when it melted, I stirred over low heat for about five minutes until it started to turn color and get a little darker. Then I added a few red pepper flakes and a teaspoon of dijon, and continued to stir until the mustard was incorporated into the butter (a few minutes). Then I added lemon zest and about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts and continued to stir for a few minutes until it looked done (sorry, can't be more precise!).
The end
And then I mixed the sauce and cooked raviolis, placed on a plate and added chopped fresh basil on top and freshly grated parmesan on top and a slice of homemade ciabatta bread next to the raviolis. And then I put it on the table and we devoured it.
That's it!
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