Do you guys have ‘Cooking Bucket Lists’ of all the recipes you are dying to try? I keep a running tab in my mind. I’m constantly thinking about recipes from work, recipes I pin on Pinterest, and recipes from all of the amazing bloggers I follow. There are soooo many I want to make myself, but there is just not enough time in the day! If only I had all the time in the world to spend inmy kitchen whipping up recipe after recipe. Ohh, food blogger dreams…
There is one thing on my list, however, that has been a must-make since I moved in with my roommates. Amy’s daughter got the KitchenAid pasta attachment (and I have the stand mixer) so we have been talking about making homemade pasta for months. Finally we got around to it! Emma and I got out our aprons and got to work. We were going to make homemade ravioli with a spinach, ricotta and feta filling.
It is so easy to make your own pasta. Literally you can make the dough in 30 seconds flat. All you need is flour, 1 egg, olive oil and a little bit of water. Mix all of that together to form a doughy ball, pop in the fridge to rest for about a half hour, and there you go. This is where the fun or hard part comes in, depending on how you look at it. The pasta roller can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. If you treat it nicely, it will be good to you. But like all kitchen appliances, the moment you yell at it or give it a little bit of attitude, it’ll spit right back in your face. You just have to be patient here and follow directions. It isn’t hard, but sometimes we try to go through the motions too fast and you end up tearing the dough, or not getting it thin enough.
We had a lot of fun rolling out our dough into super long, flat strips — perfectfor our little spinach-filled raviolis. The KitchenAid pasta set also comes with a wide noodle attachment to make Fettuchini and a thin noodle attachment for spaghetti. It is so much easier to show someone how to roll pasta than it is to explain it in words. But I’ll give it a whirl and hope you can all understand what I’m talking about.
First, make sure your KitchenAid mixer is OFF. The instruction manual shows you exactly how to attach the pasta roller, so I won’t try to explain that here. Set the attachment at the highest number so the rollers are wide apart. Divide your dough into 4 pieces. Flatten 1 piece into a rectangle and dust with flour. Now you can go ahead and turn on your mixer to a slow speed at number 2. Feed the dough through the rollers. Once it has gone all the way through, fold it in half and feed it through again. Fold it in half again and feed through one more time. Make sure to dust with flour before each feed to prevent it from sticking to the rollers. Turn the dial down one number and feed the dough through the rollers again. No folding this time around. Continue this pattern, dialing the number down one notch each time, and again no folding. Do this until your dough is the width you are looking for. It should be a smooth, long sheet about 4 inches wide and 1/16th inch thick.
Cooking homemade pasta doesn’t take nearly as much time as cooking the boxed stuff. Let your water come to a boil and then drop in your raviolis. After about 2-3 minutes, they should be finished!
This spinach, feta and ricotta filling was the perfect complement to our homemade ravioli. Add a little homemade pesto or marinara sauce on top, you’ve got a delicious dinner made completely from scratch. How’s that for some gourmet home cooking?
Spinach, Feta & Ricotta Filling
3 cups fresh spinach leaves, softened
½ cup part-skim ricotta
1 cup Feta cheese
2 tbsp garlic powder
salt and pepper
Mix everything together in a bowl. Let stand in refrigerator for about an hour.
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