Esther's Kitchen - Four Cheese Ravioli

Make yourself a cup of tea. I cannot stress enough how vital this stage is to any attempt at cooking with small children. You need to have achieved an almost monk-like level of calm, particularly if you're using a pasta machine.

Wash hands and don aprons. Make sure the aforemetioned pasta machine is firmly secured to the table and you have issued all the proper warnings about not crushing your fingers in it or cutting yourself on the ravioli cutter.

Ready? Let's go!

Pasta Dough 

Do this in advance. For one adult and one child:

- 1 egg

- 100g of flour ('00' pasta flour is recommended, plain white works too)
(For two adults and a child go for 2 eggs and 200g)

Mix in a bowl white a knife until it all comes together, then knead on a clean surface until smooth. It isn't as tricky as kneading bread. Just press down with the heel of your hand and stretch it out, then turn and repeat. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Four Cheese Filling

I did this bit in advance too. Again, adjust quantities for more people, but for me and Esther we had:

- 1 ball of mozzarella, chopped into 1/2cm dice
- 1 tablespoon of cream cheese
- about 40g grated chedder
- about 20g grated parmesan
- 1 egg yolk
- a good grind of black pepper
- a pinch of nutmeg

Mix it all up in a bowl. The egg yolk should bind it all together.

The nutmeg is optional, of course, but it does seem very Italian (unlike the cheddar and cream cheese).

Making the Ravioli

Set up the pasta machine somewhere suitable. Where you aren't going to get flour all over the clean laundry, or find coins and beads stuck in your pasta dough. You have a cup of tea, right?

Cut the chilled dough in half and lightly dust with flour. Squash down a bit with hands and roll through the widest setting (ours is '7'). Fold it in half and roll through a further six times on the same setting. If it's getting sticky, lightly dust with flour again.

Once you've done that, turn down the width to 6, and roll it through once. Don't fold in half any more, but roll through once on 5, 4, 3, and 2. You might have to cut your dough in half if it's got too long. Then we hung it up on the clothes drier and rolled the other piece of pasta.

Here is a video of the inimitable Gennaro Contaldo making ravioli. On a balcony somewhere exotic. Not in a conservatory in the driving rain. Watch him do it, and then do that.


Basically (if you aren't watching the Gennaro video), you need to cut a strip of pasta twice as wide as the ravioli will be, then dot teaspoon-sized blobs of filling about two finger-widths apart.

Once you've done that, wet around the edge with water and fold over the pasta, squeezing out as much air as possible. Then press down to seal with your fingers and cut the ravioli out with the cutter. Confused? I did tell you to watch the video.

Bring a large pan of salted water to a rolling boil and add all the ravioli for about two minutes. They will float up to the top when cooked. Serve with whatever pasta sauce you like. Or pesto. Or butter.

We had ours with a mixed vegetable sauce, which I'd made for Eliot and pureed but it was so tasty that Esther and I ate it too.

Adam

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