Homemade, Homemade, Homemade Ravioli

Tuesday was my night to cook dinner and I decided to make Ravioli. I looked online at "recipes" - which in my opinion can barely call themselves recipes - whose ingredients were: 1 pound frozen ravioli, jarred tomato sauce. I mean really! That's not a recipe!

Anyway, certain ingredients hare hard to find here (like frozen ravioli, or jarred tomato sauce...), but I was pretty sure I could make it myself. I made pasta a dozen times or so in college. It's an easy process, but it's time consuming. The only ready made ingredients I had were cheese, and a jar of tomato paste.

So I made "three-times-over homemade ravioli".

Homemade #1: I made ricotta cheese
Actually, I made fresh cheese a couple of weeks ago and put it in the freezer. I had read some recipes online and was sure that I could do it myself. You heat milk to almost boiling, add vinegar, let it curdle and separate the curds from the whey (a la Little Miss Muffet). It was pretty easy, but very messy. I don't think I would eat it with a spoon or anything, but it worked in the ravioli.

Homemade #2: I made tomato sauce
This was actually my favorite part of the process. I found a good recipe for roasted tomato sauce that's essentially tomatoes and garlic, roasted for like 45 minutes and mushed up with some spices. I mixed it with my jar of tomato paste for a pretty good tomato sauce.

Homemade #3: I made pasta
Yes, I actually made pasta. The recipe is 1 c. flour, 1 egg, 1 T water, 1 T oil. You put the flour in a bowl and make a little well in the middle. You put the egg, water and oil in the middle and begin to mix together with your fingers. Incorporate more flour until it is one big paste-y mess. Then you knead it for a while, roll it out, and either fill it (for ravioli) or cut and dry it (for spaghetti).

So, I took all of my ingredients (homemade and otherwise) and made ravioli. I rolled out the dough, put little spoonfuls of the cheese mixture (ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese and egg) on the pasta, folded the pasta over to cover the cheese, used some water to keep the filling in. Then I boiled the ravioli for 3-5 minutes. I layered a baking dish with tomato sauce and ravioli and baked that for 30ish minutes and then topped it with some more mozzarella.

And it turned out pretty well :) I served it with garlic toast. Yummmmy.

I was telling someone that I can make pletny of things here, it's just not very convenient, you know? :)