Ricotta and SausageFilled Ravioli
- 1 small onion, quartered
- 1 small stalk celery, cut into chunks
- 1 small carrot, cut into chunks
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 12 ounces sweet Italian sausage without fennel seeds, removed from casing
- 1 cup fresh ricotta, drained
- 1/4 cup grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for serving
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
- 1 recipe pasta dough (see page 150same as cannelloni)
- Kosher salt
- Pulse together the onion, celery, and carrot in a food processor until finely chopped, to make a pestata.
- Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
- Once the oil is hot, scrape in the vegetables and cook until they begin to soften, about 3 to 4 minutes.
- Pour the white wine over the sausage in a medium bowl, and crumble the sausage into small pieces with your fingers.
- Add the sausage and wine to the skillet with the vegetables, breaking up the sausage as finely as possible with a wooden spoon.
- Saute until the sausage is completely cooked through, about 4 to 5 minutes.
- Scrape into a bowl to cool.
- When the sausage is completely cooled, stir in the ricotta, grated cheese, and parsley.
- Roll the dough: Cut it into four equal pieces.
- (You could roll the dough out with a rolling pin, but a small Imperia pasta machine is not expensive; it rolls the dough out in even strips and makes ravioli making so much easier.)
- Flatten a piece of dough into a rectangle, approximately 2 inches by 2 inches, and roll through the widest setting on the pasta machine.
- Fold this rectangle of dough like a letter, and roll through again.
- Repeat the rolling and folding a few more times, to knead and smooth the dough.
- Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough.
- Switch to the next-narrowest setting on the machine.
- Roll a dough strip through, short end first.
- Repeat with the remaining dough strips.
- Continue this process with narrower settings, now rolling each strip only once through each setting, until youve gotten to the next-to-last setting and the dough strips are about as wide as the machine (6 inches).
- Lay one strip out on a floured counter, and place a heaping teaspoon of filling at about 4-inch intervals down the center of the strip (you will get about six or seven large ravioli per strip).
- Brush around the filling with water, fold the strip of dough over the fillings, the edges touching evenly, and seal the edges by pressing lightly.
- Using a serrated pastry cutter or pizza cutter, cut the ravioli evenly between the fillings into rectangles.
- Repeat with remaining dough and filling.
- Keep the ravioli on a baking sheet lined with a clean kitchen towel, and covered, until you are ready to cook them; up to 2 or 3 hours is fine.
- To cook the ravioli, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
- Drop the ravioli into the pot one by one, stirring with a wooden spoon periodically so they do not stick to the bottom.
- Have a saute pan with the bubbling sauce ready to dress the ravioli.
- Once the ravioli are in the boiling water, cook for 3 minutes, then fish them out with a spider or slotted spoon.
- Drain them, and set them in the sauce.
- Stir gently to coat the ravioli with sauce.
- When ready to serve, toss some grated cheese over the ravioli plate, and spoon the remaining sauce on top.
- You can serve these with a simple marinara and some grated Grana Padano or sauteed with butter and sage and some grated Grana Padano.
- If you want to freeze the ravioli: Once you have set them on a lined baking sheet, cover with a film of plastic wrap and set in the freezer for 2 or 3 hours, till frozen.
- Gently collect the frozen ravioli, set them flat in a ziplock bag, and lay the bag flat in a sealed plastic container.
- They will last in the freezer for a month or more.
onion, stalk celery, carrot, extravirgin olive oil, white wine, sweet italian sausage, fresh ricotta, fresh italian parsley, recipe pasta, kosher salt
Taken from www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ricotta-and-sausage-filled-ravioli-385306 (may not work)