Home Made Ravioli - Worth a Try

Tonight I decided I would make home made ravioli. It looked so easy in the cookbook, the pictures made it look like simplicity in cooking form. While it was not difficult to prepare, it was very messy, or I was very messy, in any case there was a mess. We can assign blame later.

So I began! I cooked my ground turkey and I mixed my ravioli filling - garlic, herbs and spices and ricotta (instead of mascarpone, it's what I had on hand, and I forgot to put in the Parmesan cheese... oops!) I laid out my wonton wrappers because they are multipurpose items, and scooped my filling onto each little square. I brushed the edges with water and topped them each with another wonton wrapper and pressed to seal. They were adorable pouches of delicious.

In the meantime I was making the sauce these little cuties would be cooking in. Red wine in place of white... what's life without improvisation? The wine is mixed with chicken broth and you put in cherry tomatoes and cook them until they pop. But I was impatient so I squashed them. I scooped out the little flattened tomatoes and ground them up in the Manual Food Processor so my sauce would be a little smoother. I accidentally reduced too much liquid so I added a can of diced tomato.

To cook the ravioli you put them in the sauce and "swirl to coat". I'm not even kidding, that was my instruction; so I'm "swirling" and nothing is really being coated so I just scooped some sauce on top of the little buggers.

After the cooking time was up I fished out two, one for me and one for Shane my dearest husband, and we dined upon these test ravioli. They needed more cooking time. Despite the recipe's clear lack of calling for a lid, I added a lid after more attempts at "swirling" and then just scooping.

Then we feasted upon ravioli as if we were royalty who particularly love to feast upon ravioli. They were delicious, but sort of hard to eat without making a mess. They were kind of too big, and I ended up chopping all mine up (yes, after all that work, I just chopped them up) and it turned into sort of goulash.

When I finally finished cleaning up the HUGE mess I had made while preparing this dinner I decided that next time I will just buy the filled pasta and make this amazing sauce to go with them. I'm glad I made this recipe, but I don't think I will go to the trouble again.

Just Go With It

Sometimes when you are cooking things don't go the way you imagined. That's when it's most important to improvise, and be courageous enough to eat the results.

Today I made tostadas, kind of. I made refried beans, spicy rice and fried corn tortillas. I forgot to cook meat and we were out of peppers and onions. I had diced tomato in the refrigerator but forgot to add them. Sometimes new recipes are born of forgetfulness.

On the bottom was, of course, the corn tortilla. Then a layer of refried beans and then a layer of spicy rice, topped with another fried tortilla. We cut them with the pizza cutter and ate them sort of quesadilla style. They were delicious!

Here's the real recipe: Spicy Rice

Cook the desired amount of rice in chicken broth instead of water. When it's done add a small spoonful of chili sauce, or more if you like it really spicy. Add 1/4 cup tomato sauce and 2 T cream cheese. Stir until cheese melts and everything is combined. Eat it now or serve it as a side or in your favorite Mexican style dish!