With proper attention and care and willingness to see the beatings through, Heaven. Without, it has serious potential to be hell. This recipe has a fair number of firsts for me, first for making pasta(hand-rolled even, as I don't have a machine), first for having mascarpone cheese(that was the least of my derprivations as a child), and first for making a recipe from this cookbook as a single woman. This is off the top of my head.
I'm sure most of you know or have figured out what's going on, if not, I broke up with my famed sous-chef this past week. Its been a hell of a week, to say the least. I was going to take a break and prepare four Paula Deen recipes this week, Thai food, for James, for Valentine's Day. However, due to one hell of a stressful week, a loss of female support through a favored membership I can not afford, nor justify; a great deal of disappointment and a lost relationship over a stupid forced decision, I have taken the break this previous week and will be back at it next week.
I admit, if I had finished this recipe and written this blog before 7 or 8PM this evening, I may still be entirely blaming myself. Since I'm not, I'll get onto my firsts and do my best to be fair to both parties in this matter. If you have a vested interest in either party, I'll warn you now; I'm not certain I'm entirely capable of being fair right now. I could simply not mention him, but he still plays a part in this piece.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes-another first for me, easy and good. Place sweet potato on baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, roast at 350 degrees for one hour turn half-way through. Let cool until cool enough to handle. When cool enough to handle, or when pasta dough is rolled out, mix with 2 tablespoons mascarpone cheese(a new favorite), and stir until cheese is no longer visible. Yummy stuff.
I learned how to make pasta dough tonight, and its fairly simple, flour-including half cake flour, oil and eggs, add a little (very little) water if its dry. I mixed the pasta, formed a ball, and kneaded it for ten minutes. While kneading it, and feeling some of the therapeutic value of kneading dough, I've figured out why the Italians invented the pasta dough and the bread! They had to make dinner when their husbands pissed them off and they needed to beat the living crap out of something. After ten minutes, you don't feel like killing them so much when you know they were wrong too. Then you bag it or wrap it in plastic and set it aside for a half hour while the sweet potato finishes cooling.
After a half hour or overnight in the fridge (but warmed back up to room temp for rolling out), you get to imagine anyone's face you'd like to see steam-rolled being run over by your rolling pin. I was not at this point by then, I'd been too busy laughing at a friend's children. So, you divide the dough into four sections and run it through a pasta machine a few times--a couple on each setting getting smaller each time. Earth to Emeril-I do not have a pasta machine. I saw no note on how thin to roll it out. Internet, here I come. Hand rolled pasta thinness? Dime size. Oh, dear, that's thin. I need to borrow my youngest niece who at 7, is much more machine than I am, and rolls dough paper thin. Its up to me, at least they're small sheets.
I taste the sweet potato and mascarpone mix as I prepare to create my filling mounds, and decide this is a very good mix. I'll be making this mix for mashed sweet potatoes sometime too. I drop teaspoonfuls onto the pasta and forget to rim the edges with water. I top them and decide to rim them with water if needed after I cut them out. For the ones that don't line up perfectly, I do rim them with water. Some I simply run water over the sides to help them seal. Then I press the fork tines down onto the dough and find joy as they look like pretty, well-formed, but near perfect homemade ravioli. I bring the water to a boil, or close. Its getting later, I'm getting slightly impatient, and I don't wait. So I toss in the first batch and pull them out, probably too soon. They have to go back in, with the second batch. I often underestimate my time frame for these recipes. When they come out of the water and cool a bit, I taste one, near perfection. I did use my Christmas gift, the wonderful colander scoop spoon for this. It saved me finding my standard colander and clearing out the spot in the sink where I finishing dishes. Thanks, Denise!
I'd actually use wheat flour in my dough as opposed to white flour with cake flour. Keep the cake flour, just mix it half and half with the wheat flour. I believe I've grown used to more flavor than plain white flour is capable of providing. The sweet potato filling is excellent, and strong enough to pull off a more robust flour flavor.
Then I wonder where the stick of butter goes. I look for the sage too, didn't use that either. I turn the page, and voila. Melt butter chunks in pan until brown on the edges and nutty-smelling, swirl butter off of burner, add sixteen sage leaves and cook until crispy 1-2 minutes. The ravioli is supposed to be divided into four to six bowls and the sage butter poured over it. I'm not sure I got it quite nutty enough, but better as sage butter than burned. It was still excellent.
I will definitely make this recipe again, probably with a whole wheat flour to see how well it works. Maybe even tomorrow night, since I have a ton of mashed mascarpone sweet potatoes left, and love ravioli. Of course, I could eat healthy and skip the ravioli shells. We'll see;-).
No comments:
Post a Comment