The Fresh Pasta Topic

[MelissaH]

FWIW, I like the orange Zeroll for scooping balls of cookie dough, so it's not a total waste.

 

When I helped the Polish Catholic church make the pierogi (basically, the Polish version of ravioli!) for their festival, we used a disher to portion the fillings. Each day, we'd seal fillings we'd scooped and frozen the previous day into freshly made dough, and then we'd scoop and freeze the next day's fillings. We did cheese, potato, and kapusta (cabbage), and freezing the filling balls helped to make them easier to handle. For the kapusta especially, it was almost required, because when the filling balls started to thaw, the cabbage strands would start to unwind, and that made it difficult to get a good seal of the pierogi dough so it didn't dump its filling when it was boiled.

 

With more classic Italian fillings, has anyone tried this method of portioning and freezing the fillings ahead of time?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

@MelissaH I'm far too exhausted to put down my mai tai, take off my headphones, get up off my chair to check -- but I believe Bugialli (or maybe it was Vetri?) says never to freeze a ricotta filling.

 

Ironically dinner here is about to be frozen store bought ricotta ravioli with the tomato sauce from the other night.  Please don't judge me a hypocrite.  My Norpro 675 came tonight, so Lord being willing it's back to homemade fresh ravioli for tomorrow!

 

[MelissaH]

@JoNorvelleWalker, with the ricotta we get here, it probably wouldn't make much difference. If you're using great ricotta, I could see not freezing it. Where I live, despite the Italian population, that doesn't exist.

[kayb]

1 hour ago, MelissaH said:

@JoNorvelleWalker, with the ricotta we get here, it probably wouldn't make much difference. If you're using great ricotta, I could see not freezing it. Where I live, despite the Italian population, that doesn't exist.

 

But ricotta is so easy to make! (Ravioli apparently not so much. I confess to using egg roll wrappers to do so.)

[MelissaH]

33 minutes ago, kayb said:

 

But ricotta is so easy to make! (Ravioli apparently not so much. I confess to using egg roll wrappers to do so.)

Be my guest. I've tried a few times and never had enough success to make it worth the bother. Furthermore, if I'm going to make ricotta, I'm not going to want to put forth the effort to make the pasta and then put it all together. That's a far better tradeoff for me than using the icky egg roll wrappers that are sometimes available.

 

I'll happily continue to buy the ricotta that's available. If my end product is maybe a little less sublime, so be it. But if it means that (a) I'll actually make something like ravioli, and (b) that I'll make enough of it to freeze some for a later dinner, I'm all in with that.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

@MelissaH it was Vetri about the freezing, p81.

 

But this did get me reading Bugialli on the subject of ricotta.  He says American ricotta is made differently than Italian ricotta, and is actually a cheese.  Further, American part skim ricotta is more similar to what is used in Italy.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Finally success with round ravioli!

 

 

 

The Norpro dished exactly the right amount for my 50 mm ravioli cutter.  Thereby proving Bugialli correct.  I was not pleased that the Norpro pinched my hand.  I like Zeroll scoops much better.

 

 

 

 

The result plated with sage butter.  (Store bought sage, as my poor dear sage plant is looking somewhat threadbare at the moment.)  Enough thujone to sate the lust of the most degenerate absinthe fiend.

 

Humorously I neglected to add salt to the pasta water.

 

[dcarch]

7 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Finally success with round ravioli!

 

 

 

The Norpro dished exactly the right amount for my 50 mm ravioli cutter.  Thereby proving Bugialli correct.  I was not pleased that the Norpro pinched my hand.  I like Zeroll scoops much better.

 

 

 

 

The result plated with sage butter.  (Store bought sage, as my poor dear sage plant is looking somewhat threadbare at the moment.)  Enough thujone to sate the lust of the most degenerate absinthe fiend.

 

Humorously I neglected to add salt to the pasta water.

 

 

Nice! 

dcarch

[dcarch]

Can I play? 

dcarch

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

You have to tell us what it is!

 

[dcarch]

8 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

You have to tell us what it is!

 

 

Simple smoked pork, Lapa cabbage & chanterelle mushroom filling.

Home made cutter.

 

dcarch

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I'd love to learn more ideas for fillings.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

A couple of nights ago I made chicken Marsala.  Because there is a lot going on, relatively speaking, I made and cut the fettuccini about twenty minutes before it was needed, and hung the strips on one of those charming racks sized for socks and underpants.

 

When the time came to add the fettuccini to the boiling water, the pasta broke and crumbled.  About a third landed in the sink and on the floor.  (Where it fragmented into nanobits impossible to pick up.)

 

Then I remembered the same thing happened last time I made chicken Marsala.  What am I doing wrong?  If I throw fettuccini in the pot as soon as it is cut all is well.

 

Maybe I shouldn't assay bread and pasta for the same meal?

 

[Okanagancook]

I ran across this very informative video on making hand formed pasta shapes.  I wish he took a  little more time to show the details of the difficult shapes...my only complaint.

 

[SLB]

On 2/5/2017 at 7:47 AM, dcarch said:

Simple smoked pork, Lapa cabbage & chanterelle mushroom filling.

 

 

Oh, god.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Having recently taken delivery of a Breville All In One, I returned to the subject of fresh pasta.  I was delighted how easily the Breville handled half a recipe of Serious Eats egg dough.  In my hands half of a half a recipe made a dozen burrata ravioli, just right for my dinner.

 

 

 

The burrata filling was store bought...

https://www.belgioioso.com/products/stracciatella/

 

It got the job done well.  I just have to use up the rest of the container in the next day or two before it goes bad.  One thing that went wrong tonight:  I had the bright idea to place the ravioli on waxed paper.  Half the ravioli stuck.

 

Note the sage was my very own, salt preserved from a few years ago when I had a garden.

 

[Anna N]

On 6/2/2018 at 6:40 PM, Okanagancook said:

I ran across this very informative video on making hand formed pasta shapes.  I

Such a pleasure to watch an expert ply his trade. Thanks so much for sharing this. 
 

I did not realize this was such an old post but my statement stands. 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Anna N
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