Yes, I am as excited as six exclamation marks. As soon as I got to work I diced some eggplant, prepared Belgian endive for a salad, and...was taught how to make ravioli from SCRATCH! It was the funnest thing I have ever done. I am sure that one day the thrill will wear off, but I could not be more excited about making pasta from scratch, rolling it out and thinning it, making the ricotta filling, stuffing the ravioli, stamping them out, dusting them with flour to freeze. It BLEW MY MIND!
The pasta is made with oil, eggs, salt, semolina, and a bit of flour. Knead in mixing bowl until ingredients are well-incorporated but the "dough" gives a little, like play-dough. Shape into balls and dust well with flour. You need a little contraption (I don't know the name) that you feed the dough through and you gradually thin the pasta by rolling it out at different settings until thin enough. Take ravioli stamp contraptions and lay a piece of pasta over the stamp. Fill each ravioli space with filling (Ricotta, egg, garlic, black pepper, salt, parmesan - or whatever you want), then lay a second piece of pasta over the stamp. Roll out with a rolling pin until raviolis form and you can easily pull dough away from stamps. Dust with flour, freeze until ready to boil! :)
The rest of the night we spent prepping for each course of a 5-course wine dinner. The first course was fried chickpea cakes; the second course salmon with endive and arugula salad finished with poppyseed dressing; the third course was seafood risotto balls; the fourth course was filet mignon with thin tomato slices, fresh mozzarella and a slice of sicilian pizza and green peas. The last course was Carmella's homemade ricotta cheesecake - yum yum yum.
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