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

There are many products out there for ravioli making and for the most part they don't beat the old fashioned ravioli stamp. For Christmas Eve dinner, we borrowed that expensive Kitchenaid Ravioli attachment from Eric's parents and found it to be a huge disappointment.  For close to $200.00 we were expecting perfect raviolis but what we got was a mess. Nothing stuck together, the machine kept getting jammed and it didn't fill the raviolis with enough filling. We like nice big, filled raviolis. Charisse has tried other pricey machines but at the end of the day the best option is simple a hand stamp which you can find at Williams Sonoma or online for around $6.00.  It did the trick perfectly and sealed the edges nicely and you can't beat the price. 


Pasta Dough
What You Will Need:

4 large eggs
3 1/2 cups flour
1 Tbsp water
a pinch of salt

Mix all of the ingredients together until a nice ball forms (you may need to add a bit of water as you mix to get it to the right consistency, to test the dough pinch a small bit out and roll into a tiny ball.  It shouldn't be sticky but should stay together)

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and hand knead for around 10 minutes ( I count this as my arm workout for the day!)

Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest for at least 20 minutes

Use pasta roller to create thin sheets. The Kichenaid rolled to a 5 ( I'm sure every pasta roller varies so read instructions to see how thin you should roll your sheets)

Filling
What you will need:

2 heads of roasted garlic
4 oz of brie cheese
2 cups of ricotta cheese
fresh parsley
salt and pepper taste


Lay one sheet down on a flat surface and line up the scoops of filling on top.  Be generous the more filled your ravioli, the better

Whisk one egg and brush the sides of each ravioli with the egg wash.  This will act as a sort of glue and hold the edges together better. Lay another thin sheet of pasta down over the top and slowly press around each filling, trying to get the air out. 

Use your ravioli stamp and stamp out each ravioli. Dust with flour and continue until all the dough and filling is gone

Boil a large pot of salted water on the stove top and cook ravioli until they float.  About 5-8 minutes

Strain

Sundried Tomato Sauce
What you will need:

1/4 cup sundried tomatoes packed in oil (minced)
1 pint heavy cream
2 Tbsp butter
garlic (minced)
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp fresh nutmeg
lots of fresh parsley (minced)
toasted pinenuts
romano cheese

Saute the sundried tomatoes in a little of the butter and add garlic. Cook about 2 minutes

Add cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg, a hand full of parsley and simmer until thickened

Plate the ravioli with a nice amount of sauce, top with fresh parsley, fresh romano cheese and the toasted pinenuts