Arugula Ravioli With Balsamic Tomato Sauce

Right now I think we all should just take a moment and tip our hats to the brilliant individual who decided that stuffing delicious pasta with delicious things and topping it off with a delicious sauce would be a good idea. Making your own ravioli is a time-consuming, delicate affair but the rewards you reap cannot be overestimated; I am of the personal opinion that homemade pasta simply tastes better, which may have something to do with the sweet personal satisfaction of having created everything from scratch.

Then again, it's hard to imagine anything with these ingredients coming out badly. This particular dish is a specialty of my sister's, with a garlicky, slightly bitter filling of arugula, shallots and pecorino cheese inside a thin little packet of fresh pasta. The sauce can be whatever you want it to be; Piper has on other occasions used a more creamy tomato sauce, but in this instance I made a variation on the brown-butter balsamic sauce I used for the sweet potato gnocchi and I thought it worked extremely well (this is the sauce recipe featured below).

Either way, there's a great deal of excitement to be garnered from the very traditional acts of creating a dough, letting it proof, rolling it out, making the cute little ravioli packets, then cooking them and scooping them out the moment they break free of the bottom of the pot and float gently to the top of the water. It's a very engaging, exciting process--which is how I believe good cooking should be. So I would highly encourage you to give it a try. Other than the time, there's not much to it--and like I said, the experience, not to mention the mouth-watering end results, are totally worth it.

I would also like to note that the above pictures were very cleverly framed so that you would not see that Piper is not wearing pants, as is her wont.

Arugula Ravioli With Balsamic Tomato Sauce (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

For Pasta:
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons water

To make dough by hand: Mound flour on a work surface, preferably wooden, and make a well in center. Add eggs, salt, and water to well. With a fork, gently beat eggs and water until combined. Gradually stir in enough flour to form a paste, pulling in flour closest to egg mixture and being careful not to make an opening in outer wall of well. Knead remaining flour into mixture with your hands to form a dough, adding more water, drop by drop, if dough is too dry (dough should be firm and not sticky). Knead dough until smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. Cover with an inverted bowl and let stand 1 hour (to make rolling easier).

For the Ravioli filling:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large shallots, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
8 ounces arugula, washed, dried, coarse stems removed and coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons breadcrumbs measured from 2 slices or one half of a roll, pulsed in the food processor until reduced to soft crumbs
1/3 cup finely grated Romano cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
1 egg yolk (reserve egg white for sealing)
1 egg white beaten with two tablespoons of water to seal ravioli

Make Filling: Heat olive oil in a large pan at medium heat. Saute shallots and garlic for 7 to 10 minutes, until they are soft and translucent, but not brown. Add arugula, turning and stirring it frequently, until it has cooked down, its water has largely evaporated but it hasn’t lost it’s color — about 3 to 5 minutes. Let mixture cool, then add bread crumbs and Romano cheese. Taste filling and season it as needed with salt and pepper. Add the egg yolk, stirring mixture until combined. Set aside.

To Make Ravioli Without a Ravioli Mold: Cut your pasta dough into 4 pieces, then flatten each piece into a rough rectangle and cover rectangles with an inverted large bowl.

Lightly dust 1 rectangle with flour and roll thin until almost translucent. Put sheet of dough on a floured work surface and drop 6 (1 1/2 teaspoon) mounds of filling 1 1/2 inches apart in a row down center of one half of sheet. Brush egg wash around each mound, then fold other half of sheet over filling. Press down firmly around each mound, forcing out air. (Air pockets increase the chance that ravioli will break during cooking.) Cut pasta (between mounds) with cutter into 3-inch rounds. Line a large shallow baking pan with a clean kitchen towel (not terry cloth) and dust towel with flour, then arrange ravioli in 1 layer in it. Make more ravioli with remaining pasta dough, 1 sheet at a time, and remaining filling, transferring ravioli to lined pan. Heat a large pot of salted water to boil, and drop in ravioli. Pasta is done when it floats to the top of the water. Remove and hold in colander. Toss in sauce and serve.

For Sauce:
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 tablespoon butter
3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 shallots, thinly sliced.
salt and pepper

Melt butter in a saucepan and cook until butter begins to brown. Remove from heat; add shallots, and toss in butter until they begin to soften (cooking gently over low heat if necessary, so as not to burn the butter). When shallots are soft add in balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and simmer over low heat until beginning to thicken. Toss in tomatoes and cook an extra 2-3 minutes, then toss with pasta.

Enjoy!