It would seem as though Good ol’ Longfellow was keeping a trained on on foodblogs as of late, Considering some of the strange (but delightful) things we’ve all seen come from them. New uses for old ingredients, gadgets and tools putting savoury ingredients in sweet things- bacon cupcakes, bacon candy, garlic ice cream.. just to name a very slim few.

Heck, I think its true myself. Everything needs to change into something new and strange, or else it just gets boring. No one likes boring, right?

So the other day when I made ravioli for my husband and I, I decided to go about my preparation and presentation a tad bit differently. Rather than fry up the pasta for neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comdipping, appetizer style, or boil up the pasta to be served with a thin red sauce, traditional style- I decided to give steaming a try, and serve the pasta “Asian style” with chopsticks and a thick red sauce for dipping.

Incase this sounds strange, I decided to take the following instructional photographs to explain the proceedure.

Fig 1.1: Grasp ravioli firmly with chopsticks and lift out of bowl.

Figure 1.2: Drop ravioli into pasta sauce. You can either dunk or swirl your ravioli, depending on how much sauce you’d like to collect.

Figure 1.3: Remove Ravioli from sauce bowl with chopsticks. Place in mouth, Chew, swallow. Enjoy.

Figure 1.4: Repeat.

See, its not so strange, just a little different.

This is my very favourite stuffed pasta recipe, and although you still have to do the prep work by hand, it actually uses a secret cheat. Wanna know what the secret is?

Ok, come really close to the screen and I’ll whisper it to you…
Closer…
Closer…

I use wonton wrappers for the pasta!

Yep. And they taste just like regular pasta, they’re the perfect size for filling and folding, and they’re perfect.

The really great thing about the recipe I’m gonna give you, is that these are very versatile. They can either be fried, boiled or steamed. I make these for every party that I throw, only I made a triple batch and fry them up so they’re more like finger food. They are a HUGE hit. You can boil them and serve them as regular filled pasta with whatever sauce you like, and you can switch up the ingredients. They freeze really well and store really well while frozen.

So here you go. My recipe for Ravioli-

For 1 batch (which makes about 50 ravioli, and feeds about 4 people as an entree)

2 cups mozzarella cheese, grated (whole milk is best, but part skim works just fine)
1 cup smoked mozzarella cheese, grated
1 cup white cheddar cheese, grated
4 tablespoons garlic powder (you can use minced garlic if you like)
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (dry mix of oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme and parsley. Think Scarborough Fair, plus a few other seasonings)
1/4 cup+ 2 tablespoons powdered parmesan OR
1/4 cup finely grated aged parmesan
10-20 black olives, sliced or chopped
1/4 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk ricotta cheese

1 package wonton wrappers, small square or small round size. (they’re about 2.5 inches square)

1 egg, beaten
3 tablespoons water

In a small bowl (cereal sized or smaller) beat together the egg and water until the colour is uniform. This is your egg wash for sealing the wonton around the filling. Set aside.

In a larger bowl, mix together the mozzarella, smoked mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan, garlic and Italian seasonings. Toss the cheese around in the bowl so the spices and garlic can adhere to it. Next, add the remaining ingredients and mix well with a rigid spoon. Refrigerate for about an hour to allow the filling to really develop the flavours.

While the filling is in the fridge, allow the wonton wrappers to sit on the counter, still sealed, so they will come to room temperature by the time you’re gonna fill them. This way they’ll fold easier and with less rips or tears.

When the hour or so has passed (you can leave the cheese mixture in the fridge for up to overnight, if you wish, but I’d only set out the wrappers for about an hour or two) remove the cheese from the fridge and prepare your filling station.

The easiest way to do this, is clear off an entire counter, clean it throughly, dry it and lay down a layer of paper towels. I put my bowl of filling on my left, and my small bowl with egg wash on my right. I use a pastry brush to apply the egg wash (you can use your index finger though) and I use a 1 teaspoon measuring spoon to dispense the filling. You can use a different type of spoon, but really you only want to put about a teaspoon of filling in each ravioli. Anyways… I put my stack of wonton wrappers between the filling bowl and the space I plan to use to lay down my wonton wrapper and make the magical transformation from flat sheet of pasta to delicious bundle of cheesy goodness. That space should be about 5″ square, so you have enough room to move the sheet around when filling and folding and whatnot.

Really, you don’t have to have a “station” so much as its just a lot more organized and clean to do it this way. Whatever you do, WASH YOUR HANDS THROUGHLY before setting up your station, and again after you’ve set up your station, right before you start the filling process. It requires hands on contact with the food, so.. yeah. No one wants to eat what you last touched. Whatever it was.

Lay down one sheet of wonton in the designated place. Scoop a lightly generous teaspoonful of cheese filling and place it directly in the center of the wonton wrapper. Use your pastry brush or finger to wet two conjoined sides of the pasta sheet with the egg wash, and fold the other corner overtop the filling and seal the pasta, pressing the sides together. Lift up the sheet and press as much of the air out of the little packet as possible. Air is what causes the pasta to explode during the cooking process, and every last bit of cheese is sacred. Just seal the pasta as well as possible, being gentle as to not tear the pasta itself.

You should have a little cheese filled triangle.
The cheese should be at the bottom center of the triangle, as compacted as possible, not spread throughout the center of the triangle. If you want, you can leave the pasta alone at this point. For a more decorative touch, you can fold it. take the two bottom points of the triangle and fold them downward. Wet one side of one point and press the other point ontop of it, sealing it.

Figure 2.1: Kinda like this.

Really though, you don’t have to fold your pasta like this. If you want a detailed description of other ways to fold pasta or wonton, just google “How to fold wonton” or “how to fold tortellini”. You’ll end up with a whole ton of how to’s and step by step photo sets.

Once you’ve made your little cheese parcels, You can either lay them out on a cookie sheet covered in waxed paper, spaced apart, and then freeze them for a few hours before collecting them up and placing them in a dated plastic bag or container for future use, OR, you can refrigerate them for a day or so, OR you could just make them right then.

To boil them, just dump a handful of them in a pot of boiling water until they float to the top, skim them off and place them in a serving bowl. Keep in mind, they’ll stick together, so its best to place them directly in the bowls you plan on serving them in.

If you plan on frying them, get out the deepfryer or 6 quart dutch oven filled with a 1/2 gallon of vegetable oil, heat the oil to about 360 degrees and dunk the ravioli into the hot oil until they are golden brown. When frying them, make sure not to crowd them, and only do about 4 or 5 at a time. It should take about two minutes to fry ‘em up, but it might take less. Keep a constant eye on them, and remove them when they turn a nice crunchy looking golden brown. Drain them on a wire mesh cooling rack overtop newsapaper. Serve hot or lukewarm. Heck, they’re even good cold.

If you plan on steaming them, bring 1/4 to 1/2-inch of water to a simmer over medium heat. Spray your steamer’s surface lightly with the non-stick vegetable spray to prevent sticking. Place as many dumplings as will fit into a steamer, without touching each other. Cover and steam for 5 to 10 minutes over medium heat. Remove the pasta from the steamer to a heatproof platter and place in oven to keep warm. Repeat until all dumplings are cooked.

Personally, I prefer them boiled or fried, but steaming works fine too.

Serve with warmed sauce of your choice. I used a premade this time *gasp* because after all that cheese grating and mixing and folding and steaming, I really didn’t feel like making a sauce, too. heh.

Really, these are wonderfully delicious little packets of cheesy goodness. You can fill them with whatever you like, of course, as I’ve made them with shredded cooked chicken mixed with the cheese, or with cooked shredded spinach mixed with the cheese, or without olives.

They’re also a great way to use up the bits and ends of the cheese you have in your fridge. Mix Ricotta and cheddar, or ricotta, parmesan and mozzarella, or ricotta, mozzarella and provolone. If you beat cottage cheese until its smooth, you can use that in place of ricotta. I try to have at least one type of strong flavoured cheese (parmesan, provolone), one type of melty stretchy cheese (Mozzarella), and type of tubbed cheese (Ricotta, cottage or cream).

Also, the filling here works as a great stuffed shells or manicotti filling, or as a flavour filled alternative to plain cottage cheese or ricotta in lasagna.

However you do make ‘em, be sure to enjoy them!

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:13 am and is filed under October 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.