You know, it's actually easier to pick a dish for smaller, lesser known countries than it is for countries with such rich culinary backgrounds like France, China, Mexico, and today's star: Italy. I recognize that food in Italy differs from one region to another, but that's true of many countries. At first I was hesitant to cook pasta, because everyone expects that. I wanted to go with something unique. But at the same time, it might be a little disappointing to have an Italian meal without fresh pasta. It seemed a little blasphemous. So I went with ravioli, since filled pasta is obviously the best kind.
Fresh pasta starts with just flour and egg. You make a mound of flour, create a well for your egg, then start beating the egg with your fingertips while pulling in the flour a little at a time. Once the mixture is shaggy and sticky, you start adding a little bit of water until it forms a ball.
The ball of dough is a little lumpy and very yellow, thanks to the egg. I'll tell you a secret about myself: I don't really like pasta that much. It's fine, and I won't ever say no to eating it, but it doesn't excite me. Unlike other people, it's not the food I reach for when I want a quick dinner. But fresh pasta is different. It's worlds away from dry pasta. It's closer to dumpling dough or Chinese egg noodles than dry spaghetti.
While my little ball of dough rested, I set to work on making the filling, which is super simple and traditional: spinach and ricotta. Those two ingredients get mixed up with an egg, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of nutmeg, and all the parmesan cheese I had left. It's not real parmesan, just the kind in the plastic shaker container, but it does the job of adding salt and dryness to the wet filling.
After the dough had rested about 30 minutes, I started rolling it out into sheets. There are a few different ways people make ravioli. My way involved not actually having all the tools most modern ravioli makers use. I have a pasta roller attachment for my mixer, which means I had to roll out the dough by hand, cut some sheets, then feed them through the roller one at a time. The main recipe I used said to roll all the dough into one huge, thin sheet, then cover half of it completely with the filling, then fold the plain side over the filled side. I did that on a smaller scale, as seen above. The difference in that recipe and mine is that they then used a special rolling pin that created the shape of a bunch of ravioli, and then went over the lines with a special ravioli crimper. I have none of those things, so what I tried to do is cut smaller squares with a pizza cutter. It didn't work so well, since the filling just kind of squirted out the sides.
I then went along the edges with a fork to seal them. You can see the spinach coming out of the bottom.
Plan B was simply cutting smaller rectangles, then putting the filling in one by one and sealing the edges. I was comfortable with that since it was very similar to just making dumplings. While looking at the ravioli Wikipedia page, there's a picture that shows a sheet of dough with the filling dotted in sections, which would have been a much better way to do this.
But it's fine, because I reduced a recipe that originally made 150 ravioli way down so I ended up only having to make less than 30 individual raviolo (that's the singular). As you can see above, there were a few pieces of dough that didn't make perfect rectangles, so I ended up with a couple tortellini as well, and many rectangular rather than square ravioli.
After boiling the ravioli for a few minutes, I served them with a brothy sauce with lots of olive oil, veggie sausage, sage, and fennel seed. I also topped it with some lemon thyme and crushed red pepper.
And for dessert...tiramisu! This dessert has only actually been around since the 60s or so, but it's earned its spot in Italian cuisine. The components are very Italian and it's actually my favorite dessert, so I knew I couldn't pass up the chance to actually make it for the first time.
The firs thing I did was get the coffee prepped for dipping the lady fingers in. I used a mix of espresso powder and regular coffee, placed in a French press and brewed very strongly.
The coffee is then mixed with some kind of booze. I used amaretto because it's my favorite, and is very Italian, but many people use rum, sherry, brandy, etc.
While the coffee brewed, I started on the cream filling. It all starts with fresh eggs. We are lucky enough to get a CSA with some nice eggs every other week.
Now, traditionally the eggs in tiramisu aren't cooked at all. That's why you should use the freshest eggs possible due to the risk of salmonella. I couldn't guarantee that my eggs wouldn't make us sick, so I decided to go the tempered route. I set up a bain marie by boiling a stock pot of water and placing my eggs mixed with sugar over it, stirring for several minutes while the steam heated the eggs just enough to cook the danger out of them. Once heated enough, the mixture takes on an almost custardy texture.
The mixture is then transferred to the stand mixer, where it's whisked on high until super fluffy and more than four times bigger. It's actually really mesmerizing seeing gloopy eggs turn into what looks like buttercream.
Mascarpone cheese is then mixed in little by little until it's all homogeneous. The result is light, fluffy, sweet, and a little tangy.
The next step is dipping and layering the ladyfingers. Some people choose to make their own ladyfingers but honestly I had enough to do without messing around with trying to bake something. I simply bought a huge pack of them on Amazon.
The cookies are briefly dipped in the coffee and amaretto mixture, then layered into a casserole dish. I sprinkled mine with more espresso powder and cocoa powder because one of the recipes I used said it helped soak up more of the liquid so it wouldn't all sop into the bottom.
The cookies are layered with half the mascarpone filling, then another layer of cookies, then another layer of mascarpone.
The layers fit almost right up to the top of my dish. I decided I wanted it to look fancy and did some triangle cutouts with the espresso and cocoa. It doesn't look that great; I should have left it plain. This was taken maybe an hour after I assembled it; after leaving it overnight all the powder on top got soaked into the mascarpone, making it look a little cleaner.
Those layers of ladyfingers and mascarpone, though... It's not the prettiest dessert, but who cares. It tastes amazing. I was afraid it would be too bitter with all the espresso and cocoa, but honestly it was just the right amount. The mascarpone is so rich that the layers balance each other out really nicely. And honestly, set any kind of coffee flavored dessert in front of me and I will destroy it. In a good way.
This meal, while it seems like a lot, was actually one of the easiest ones I've made. I think because I actually made the tiramisu the night before I made the ravioli, so I didn't have 20 things going on at once. I think also cutting down the recipe for the pasta dough was a great idea, because too often I'm stuck in the kitchen hand-making dozens of fiddly little dumplings. Maybe this will inspire me to make fresh pasta on a semi-regular basis!
Recipes Used: Ravioli // Pasta Dough // Tiramisu
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