Roasted Fig and Goat Cheese Raviolis A Simple Sage Sauce

We were in Costco the other day and ran across a display of all the cartoons we grew up with, packaged in wonderful DVD boxed sets. Helloooo Loony Toons, good bye paycheck. We hit that point where we've started talking about getting some offspring and what we want them to watch on TV comes up every now and again, especially when channel surfing lands us on some kids network. Every conversation tends to center around how much better TV was when we were kids (the answer is "much") and how awful kids TV is now. So coming across these boxed sets really made our day and restored hope in the future of humanity or something like that. What does this have to do with our post? Absolution nothing, but it must have been pretty funny to see grown adults getting excited over kids shows in the middle of Costco. This post more centers around the fig tree in our backyard and the comedy of errors that produced these raviolis. So of the multitude of trees that we've been able to bring back to life here since we've moved in include now 2 Fig trees which both produced fruit this year. We were pretty excited about that, not as excited as we were about the nectarine tree but still pretty excited. When the first crop came, they were horrid and we were pretty disappointed but have heard that its pretty normal for the first crop to be a rough one for figs. Around the same time we were given some figs from someone and Charisse got crafty in the kitchen. After our Christmas Ravioli disaster of 2009 Charisse dove into a rav making fever and really nailed down a solid method of putting them together. We've found that using a hand press was the best way and this was the perfect excuse to use it. Pulling together basically stuff we had in the kitchen, we did a goat and ricotta cheese base with the chopped roasted figs. The flavors were wonderful. Everything you love about both types of cheese accented with sweet fig. The only thing we'd change next time is the texture. It needed a little something that separates the texture of the cheese from the texture of the ravioli dough. What that is we don't know, maybe you do?

Brie and Roasted Garlic Ravioli

Our favorite food is pasta.  Honestly, if we were stuck on a desert island with only one food for the rest of our lives, we would choose pasta!!  Egg pasta, semolina pasta, spinach pasta, tomato pasta, pasta with marinara sauce, pasta with pesto sauce, pasta with creamy Alfredo sauce, pasta with seafood, pasta with chicken, pasta with veggies, we love pasta. This is an intense life long love affair with pasta.  We recently bought the Kitchenaid Pasta Roller attachment and decided put it to work. Pasta stuffed with yummy stuff...otherwise known as ravioli.

Making the dough was a cinch. Here's a tip from the Petruno household on amazingly fresh pasta...Play with your dough people! No really, I know usually in bread making the less you handle your dough the better but with pasta dough...play, smash, roll and kneed. You'll notice a difference trust us. This time we let the Kitchenaid do most of the work but for the last 10 minutes or so Charisse hand kneaded the daylights out of the thing. The dough should be leathery and pliable but not sticky or crumbling apart. While the dough rested it was time to put together the filling. Roasted garlic and brie cheese, a combination that combines two of the worlds greatest things. Topped with a sun-dried tomato sauce and toasted pine nuts, there wasn't enough to go around.

Chef's Note: I could eat these everyday! Although next time if I were to change on thing I would add some roasted chicken or spinach to the filling for more texture and color. The texture of the brie was really similar to the texture of the pasta.  

Pictures and Recipe after the break