ravioli lessons

18 days to go.
passport en route to Ottawa again.

It's been a while since I've written, but people keep visiting the site. Thanks. I saw there was a hit from Kabul this past week.

When Rachel and I sat down to determine a date for our second meal (for a description of the first, click here) we found there was only one day that would work for both of us before I left: Sunday, August 6. So that's what it was.

We decided that the entree would consist of three ravioli courses. Rachel had been to this amazing restaurant in Woodstock, NY and wanted to re-create the meal, which included ravioli stuffed with ricotta and served with grilled pear and toasted pine nuts. But of course, one ravioli would never do, so we opted for three, continuing on the fruit and meatless theme. By Sunday was had decided on two more combinations: sauted eggplant and cilantro filling with tomato cream and cardamom sauce and walnut, fig and blue cheese filling with a balsamic reduction sauce. This menu, we realized, was quite ambitious, not only because of its breadth but also because neither Rachel nor me are ravioli experts.

The first thing we learned about ravioli involved the pasta dough itself. Although the Naked Chef is right about most things, he seemed to have erred when recommending that the sheets of pasta be spaced with damp tea towels after rolling. He didn't mention that the dough might stick to the tea towels (he didn't say anything about spelt pasta dough with seemed to have a strong desire to fully integrate itself with the tea towels that sandwiched it). So off came the pasta, back into a ball to be rolled again.

Finally we had our sheets of pasta layered with wax paper ready to go. Once the fillings were complete we started filling, ending up with 18 of each type.

The next lesson was: watch out for overly moist fillings-they tend to render your ravioli unfit to boil. So out went the 18 ricotta-filled past pockets. Thankfully Rachel's quick thinking saved us. She substituted wanton wrappers for the next attempt and they were deemed successful by our guests.

A few of the pockets opened, but for the most part we were able to produce, in total, 27 plates of ravioli for our 7 guests and us.

Following the ravioli came another rip-off from Woodstock (well done Rach), a great salad featuring chevre, diced mango and candied pecans. For dessert (the course where Rachel's knowledge, creativity and experience far exceed mine) we experienced fresh basil puree on strawberries and cream over shortbread cookies and, to close the meal, small scoops of olive oil and vanilla bean ice cream with black peppercorn biscotti. Our Italian-Mennonite friend provided the espresso. Wine was selected for each of the ravioli courses by the good staff of Banville and Jones here in Winnipeg.

I was going to write something about post-modernism and watermelon, but I'll save that for next time.