Running, Ravioli, and Gelato

The runner, complete with finisher's medal (and ice pack).

This past weekend my sister Anne ran her very first half marathon - and rocked it's socks off for that matter, by finishing in a mere 2 hour 2 minutes and 29 seconds! To celebrate her efforts, I decided to treat her to a glutinous dinner (what better way to celebrate getting up at 3 a.m. to run 13.1 miles?).

Anne's favorite food on the planet is ravioli. It doesn't matter what type of ravioli it is, she loves them all. Although I have tried to make homemade pasta once or twice before, I have always been too afraid to try making ravioli. But in honor of her effort at trying something new, I decided to get over my fears and try something new too.

The first step in making homemade pasta is making the dough. This starts with 4 whole eggs:

which you whisk together with 1 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and 1 Tbsp of salt. Place 3 cups of all purpose flour in a food processor and add egg-oil-salt mixture. Pulse a few times to combine, then stir for about a minute. When you are finished, the dough will not be smooth and will look something like this (I think it looks like couscous):


Remove dough from food processor and form into a ball on a lightly floured surface:

Cover with saran wrap and let the dough "rest" for 30 minutes. After the dough is done resting, roll it into sheets using a pasta maker to your desired thickness. There are all sorts of fancy pasta makers out there, but I own an old fashioned hand operated one:

Once you have finished rolling out all of your pasta sheets, let them rest for 10 minutes on a cutting board:


After the dough has rested and started to dry somewhat, cut the sheets into the desired width of your ravioli and spread your filling on the sheets. The filling I used for these ravioli consisted of 1 small package of goat cheese (4 ounces), 1/3 cup of grated parmesan cheese, and 1/4 cup of mascarpone cheese mixed together with 1 tsp dried basil and 1 tsp dried oregano, pictured here:


Then I used a ravioli attachment to my pasta maker to roll out the ravioli. (If you don't have a ravioli attachment, never fear - you can cut your dough into squares by hand and pinch the dges together with a fork to seal them.)

Once I had rolled out all of the ravioli, I laid them out to dry on a drying rack for another 10 minutes:

Then I got to work on the following sauce (which, by the way, was so delicious that I wanted to eat it alone as a soup):

Brown Butter Walnut Sauce

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp dried rosemary

Melt butter over medium-high heat. Add walnuts and saute until golden - about 2 minutes:


Add garlic - saute for another 30 seconds. Add wine and simmer until mixture reduces by about half. Add both herbs and simmer for another minute. Toss with ravioli and serve:

It looked so perfect that I almost didn't want to eat it. Then I smelled it and I got over that really fast. :)

And because no glutinous feast would be complete without dessert, we also had homemade nutella gelato. I use Giada's recipe for this gelato, which is fantastic, although I do recommend that you strain it twice - once after you make the custard (as she says) and once after you let the custard and nutella mixture cool overnight in the fridge, because it comes out looking super clumpy and unappetizing like this:

So I put a strainer over my ice cream maker and pour it through, like so:

Then it enters the ice cream maker looking like chocolate milk:

And you'll know it's done once it starts to thicken up, like this:

Scoop it into bowls and eat it fast - it melts really quickly since it has no preservatives! Or you can freeze it for up to a week (but I highly doubt that you'll be able to resist eating it for that long).

Mmmm - gelato.