Ravioli

My parents are still on a health kick, and because of that, I'm not allowed to use all-purpose flour in my ravioli. That doesn't really matter to me, I have some good 00 flour, but it seemed like a good intro line. Anyway, I had some really good whole-wheat 00 flour, and that’s what I used. I made a basic dough with a few eggs and flour, and I incorporated a bit of mushroom puree. I had some dried porcini mushrooms, so I rehydrated them, blended them with a tiny bit of oil and used the puree in my dough. That made a beautiful dark brown dough for my base. I rolled it out thin, and that’s the dough done. Next came the sauce. I made a basic béchamel sauce with a whole lot of cheese.

The more important part, for me, was the mushrooms. The entire idea was mushrooms in 3 ways - dough, filling, topping. For the filling, I made basic duxelles. A tip for chopping mushrooms extremely finely is to place a bunch of mushrooms in a single line along with the cutting board. Slice them really finely into strips, then turn the board 90° and chop them really fine. I didn’t have the time though, so I just used a chopper attachment on my blender. I made the mushrooms and combined them with some ricotta and orange zest to make a beautiful filling. Finally, the topping. I sliced up some shiitake mushrooms into 2mm strips, and I poached them in some red wine, balsamic vinegar, a bit of freshly squeezed orange juice and a splash of maple syrup. It made a very nice sweet and acidic mushroom which cut through the cheesiness of the pasta.

A tip for assembling ravioli, make an egg wash and spread it across both sheets before you make the ravioli. The egg wash sticks very well and makes sure your ravioli is sealed properly. I took a few large balls of my filling and placed them into the ravioli. I also had 2 egg yolks ready, and I made little wells in a couple of the ravioli in which I put the eggs. When you boil ravioli, it cooks the egg yolk slightly, so that when you slice into the ravioli, it has a runny yolk inside. With that, I was ready.

Food is eaten with the eyes first, then the mouth, so plating is important. That being said, a lot of people will attempt to plate it absolutely professionally, and while that works for some dishes, plating them in a more rustic fashion can sometimes be a better choice. In this case, I plated it in a bit of a rustic fashion, with 3 portions of ravioli on the plate. I poured a ladleful of the béchamel over the ravioli, and then the shiitake mushrooms. That’s about it, and it looked quite nice. Honestly, though, I think that another way of plating this would be to place one large ravioli on top of some shiitake mushrooms on the centre of the plate. Make a circle with a ring mould and some truffle oil around the ravioli and serve the béchamel in a nice little jug, so people can pour it themselves. Make lots of ravioli though, 1 ravioli is not enough for a meal.