Darn!....that didn’t work out so well…….

But I’m gonna try again anyway!

I’m talking about the last newsletter I sent out.  The response was under whelming – at best.  I have always gotten some response from previous recipes but it seems that none of you were thrilled with my ‘hippie potstickers’.  What’s the deal?  Sound too complicated?  Too exotic?  Or maybe you just don’t trust and old hippie named ‘Spencer’ to give you instructions on an Asian dish.  What if I told you that my full name was actually Spencer Shew Lum?  Whatever the reason, I’ll take the blame.  Of course it’s possible you were all so busy making potstickers that you didn’t have time to write.  I think that the potsticker recipe might be the best thing I’ve ever sent you, and in spite of my clumsy writing they’re really pretty easy to make.  As a matter of fact I promise you that all my recipes are easy to make because if they were hard to make I wouldn’t bother.  My philosophy remains “ cooking is fun and cooking is easy……..if it were difficult or took any brains at all, the human race would have died off centuries ago.” and I would have found a different line of work.  That said, I’m gonna give you another scary sounding recipe.  Don’t fear. It’s way easier to do than my clumsy writing makes it seem.  Don’t forget that most of these fancy high tone yuppie gourmet dishes were first made by moms and grandmas with no processors or convection ovens.  Hell, most - if not all, great traditional dishes date from before electricity.  So don’t be afraid—you can do it.

When I was a kid we almost always ate Sunday dinner with my Italian relatives.  We always had a pasta course – although we just called it macaroni – and my favorite was ravioli.  It still is, but it’s getting harder and harder to find decent ravioli.  Many Italian places have eliminated it from their menus and most of the others are serving frozen Costco style junk. They have a tiny amount of filling with almost no taste. These little leaden clumps of pasta bear no resemblance to the plump cheese, meat or chicken filled delights of my youth.  I hated fooling around with flour and rolling pins, so I had just about given up the hope of ever finding any real good homemade ravioli.  This was about the same time I started fooling around with potstickers and I couldn’t help noticing that the frozen won-ton wrappers looked strangely like raviolis.  ‘What the hell’ I said, and made up some experimental raviolis.  Whoopee-------they were the best raviolis I’d ever tasted.  Better than any restaurant, better than my aunt Minnie’s even better than my pal ‘Kicker’ Chiuli’s grandma’s.  And they’re really easy to make.  Easy, easy, easy!  No rolling pins, flour, eggs or pasta machines. Here’s how you do it and the hardest thing about making them is finding a store that sells the frozen won-ton wrappers.  These raviolis will be big – they sorta look like raviolis on steroids.  And these guys are also much lighter than the usual doughy little squares.  They can be served in a bunch of ways, as a hearty family main course, as an elegant appetizer, or like dumplings in soup.  Depending on what you fill them with they will go great with a basic red Spaghetti sauce or just lightly sautéed in butter, garlic and olive oil, or with a ritzy mornaise (white sauce).  Read on – I’ll give you lots of options, but first I’m gonna tell you how to make the basic cheese ravioli.  Then I’ll tell you how to make some different fillings.

homemade cheese ravioli

When you eat most commercial cheese raviolis you can barely taste the cheese, if you can taste it at all.  Shoot, there is usually so little filling that you can hardly even see it.  On top of that the pasta is usually so thick and heavy it’s like eating little balls of dough.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with little balls of dough in a nice sauce or rich soup.  That’s all that dumplings and gnocchi are and I like both.  These jumbo raviolis have enough filling and are thin and light enough so you can actually see the filling through the pasta.  All of the following recipes are made exactly the same way – using frozen won-ton wrappers.  The only thing to change is the filling.  Here’s how you do it:

First sprinkle some flour on whatever surface you’re using because these guys are prone to stick and pull apart.  As you make them you will probably have to keep sprinkling more flour.   Set out a wrapper and put in a teaspoon or so of the filling in the center – leaving enough room around the edges to seal the ravioli.  After you’ve made a couple you will figure out just how much filling to use - I’ve never measured, but it’s about a teaspoon.  Dip your finger into a bowl of water and wet the edge all the way round.  Then take another wrapper – wet the edges on one side and press it down on top – pushing the two wet edges together to make a good seal.  Some recipes will tell you to use beaten egg, but I’ve found that plain water works great and there’s no clean up.  As you’re sealing them – when you get to the last edge, force out as much air as you can.  If there’s lots of air they tend to puff up like a balloon and pop.  After they’re sealed I take the business end of a fork and press down all around.  It makes for an even better seal, and while it doesn’t do much for the taste, it gives it a festive, professional look.  As each ravioli is finished set it on anther plate that you’ve coated with flour and remember to keep the finished raviolis from touching each other because they will stick and pull apart.  When the plate is full, put a piece of waxed paper down and continue stacking the raviolis. 

This part in italics was added after I had made a ton of raviolis and was getting tired of the routine.  Instead or using two wrappers I started just folding the one with the fillingover into a triangle and sealing the edges.  It went a lot faster and I got twice the number or raviolis from  a pack of wonton wrappers. 

Okay you’ve made some great raviolis now you have to cook them.  If you can fill a pan with water and turn on the stove you can do it – it’s that simple.  Put a pot of water on high heat and bring it to a good rolling boil.  I usually salt the water and add a little oil, but I sometimes forget and it doesn’t seem to really matter.  When you have a good boil going, add the raviolis a few at a time.  If you dump them all in at once you cool the water and they pile up on the bottom and will stick – leaving you with one giant mess of a ravioli.  The same thing will happen if you put them into water that is not yet boiling.  We’re counting on the movement of the water to keep them from sticking together. The filling just needs to be heated and the wrappers cook really fast, so after two or three minutes at a good boil they should be just about ready.  Take one out and check that it’s done. Okay, now you know how to make and cook them, you’ll need to decide what to fill these suckers with and what kind of sauce to use.  Here’s a few ideas about fillings that I have actually made and a few I’ve only thought about.  First and probably most traditional the 3 cheese filling.  I’ll tell you how to make it shortly, but first I’m gonna go make some ravioli.

I’m back!  These raviolis sounded so good that I took a break to make some.  I hadn’t made them in over a year and wanted to check and make sure I was giving you good information. ….  I was.  They’re really good and they are really easy to make, but it is a time consuming process.  Not something you can throw together for a quick dinner, so if you decide to make them - make a lot and freeze them.  I really got into it and made 4 different kinds.  I now have a freezer full of delicious raviolis.  Before I tell you what goes into these fillings – a couple of things to remember, if you want to freeze them for later use.  While they are separated and piled on a plate, stick them in the freezer for a half hour or so – then you can put them in a plastic bag because once partially frozen they won’t stick together and they can go directly from the freezer to the stove.  They seem to last indefinitely in the freezer.

Cheese filling

3 cheese filling

Cheese & basil filling

For the simplest basic cheese filling just put some ricotta cheese in a bowl and mash it up with a fork, then put use about a teaspoon of filling for each ravioli.  Remember there are no rules about this –  you can make them using cottage cheese or even feta----or whatever, but ricotta is traditional.  I made them using ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan.  About half as much of the parmesan and mozzarella as the ricotta.  That’s the 3 cheese filling.  After I made enough to satisfy myself I still had a bunch of cheese so I started adding a whole leaf of fresh basil to each ravioli.  Because the won-ton wrappers are so thin you could see the basil leaf showing thru each ravioli and they were real good too.  Or you could chop some fresh basil and stir it into the cheese.  For that matter you could chop almost any fresh herb and mix it with the cheese.  All of these variations go great with any red pasta sauce.  I had so much fun fooling around making these raviolis that I decided to make some more the next day, trying different fillings.  Here are just a few I came up with. 

Spinach

Spicy eggplant

Mushroom, ham & cheese

Spinach is also a traditional filling for ravioli although usually the only way you can tell it’s spinach is by the slightly green color of the filling.  I think that if spinach is good enough to use as a filling then you ought to be able to taste the damn stuff.   You’re gonna start with one of the cheese mixes above then clean and finely (very finely) chop a bunch of spinach and start mixing it into the cheese.  Keep adding and mixing until the cheese just won’t take any more.  Now fill the raviolis. This also goes well with any red pasta sauce and is especially good with a Bechamel (white sauce) and the spinach is wonderful with a feta cheese in place of the ricotta.  For a really elegant touch you can skip the cheese and make what I call Ravioli Florentine – for lack of a better name.   You start with the cleaned, chopped spinach but instead of mixing it with the cheese you put it in a pan with a bunch of butter over low heat  sprinkle some sifted flour on it and stir it around until the flour has been absorbed by the butter – then slowly add some cream or  half and half.  Go easy with the cream because we want the cream to combine with the flour and make a very thick spinach/white sauce mix.    We are actually looking for a creamed spinach mix about as thick as mashed potatoes.  When you have the texture you want, grate some nutmeg onto it – give it a stir and taste it.  You want to be able to taste the nutmeg but you don’t want it over powering. Okay, stuff the raviolis and pat yourself on the back – you have just made an elegant Ravioli Florentine.  This is great with a white pasta sauce and not so great with a red.  As a matter of fact if you use more cream, to make a thinner mix, this filling can be used as a topping for fettuccini or any other pasta.   Just change the name to Spaghetti Florentine or Rigatoni Florentine or whatever.  Hell, I think it would even make a great Lasagna.  Maybe that will be my next project. . I could really go for some good home-made lasagna.  I bet if you added some grated cheese you could even use it to make a killer macaroni and cheese.

A wonderful secret that I can’t remember how I stumbled on is that finely chopped ham, mushrooms, green onions and butter combine to make a completely new taste that pretty much goes great with everything.  I use this wonderful combo in about a jillion dishes – including stuffed mushrooms, as a base for chicken cacciatore, in my Oaxacan Mole, Gumbo, Jambalaya, with breadcrumbs for stuffing artichokes and a bunch of other stuff too.  I’ve even added cooked potatoes and made it into incredible hash.  I had all the stuff in my fridge so I tried it in the Raviolis.  Bingo!, another winner!   In a pan with a lot of butter toss in a couple chopped garlic cloves then equal amounts of finely chopped ham, mushrooms and green onions. Cook it for a little while then taste it.  The ham is usually salty so you probably won’t have to add any but you might want to add some pepper. These raviolis go great with a red or white sauce, or simply with butter and garlic. I hadn’t made raviolis in well over a year, so before writing the newsletter I had gone into the kitchen just to check out the cheese mix.  It was a lot of fun and I really got into it.  My freezer is stuffed with raviolis, I wound up spending two days in the kitchen experimenting.  I made 3 kinds of raviolis with spinach, 3 cheese, cheese and herbs, chicken, the ham mushroom mix.  The best of all was an egg plant filling.  I sliced an eggplant about the thickness of my little finger, then diced it into pieces not much bigger than a pencil eraser.  I sautéed it in butter with a bunch of chopped garlic, then added a whole bunch of oregano and a can of stewed tomatoes.  I added some chopped parsley and simmered it until most of the liquid was gone.  Real easy.  It made killer vegetarian raviolis.  As a matter of fact if you added some canned tomato sauce it would be a killer spaghetti sauce.  Just remember to go heavy on the oregano and garlic.  Good luck and let me know how it turns out

Spencer

PS.You could also deep fry any of these guys and serve them as a fried wonton appetizer with some Chinese plum or sweet and sour sauce (available in bottles at your supermarket)