Homemade Mushroom Ravioli

My parents came this weekend for a visit. When they have come to Kingston before, we have often set out to one of the many delicious restaurants in Kingston enjoy in some indulgent local cuisine - Kingston, after all, has some fabulous restaurants. This time however, my husband and I thought we should plan for a dinner at home and wanted to get creative! What resulted was homemade mushroom ravioli in a creamy lemon thyme sauce. The best part of the evening, was preparing this experimental dish with the family! It was a real team effort!

Earlier in the day I tried my hand at making fresh egg pasta:

Fresh Egg Pasta

Ingredients 
600 g of flour
6 large eggs

Making the Dough
1. place flour and eggs in the stand mixer bowl. Attach the flat mixer. Turn the stand mixer on to Speed 2 for approx. 30 seconds or until flour is well mixed with the egg.
2. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and begin kneading by hand. I tried using the dough hook on the stand mixer but it turns out this dough is a little too thick for the poor machine. Luckily your hands are a practical and powerful tool! Just keep punching, stretching, poking, and working the dough until its nice and smooth. When the dough feels very firm and dry, I found it helpful to wet my hands with water and smooth a small amount across the top of the dough to moisturize it before kneading further.
3. Wrap it up very well with plastic wrap and let the dough set for 30 minutes.

Rolling out the Dough
Let me preface this by saying rolling out the dough would be SOOO much easier and better if I had a pasta maker. I read one blog that excitedly encouraged that no good Italian mother ever needed a pasta maker so rolling out pasta by hand can be done! I divided the pasta into 3 smaller balls then basically, I rolled and stretched and rolled some more until the dough was as thin as I thought it could go. Turns out even thinner would have been better. While enjoying the ravioli I noted how thick the pasta really was. The thinner you can get it the better!

Once I had finished rolling out the dough, I wrapped it back up in plastic wrap and put it back in the fridge. I was able to store it this way for about 4 hours.

The Mushroom Ricotta Stuffing 

Ingredients 

600 g of mushrooms - crimini, oyster, porchini mixture  

one small red onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic

a good splash of white wine

seasoning to taste - salt, chili pepper flakes

350 g ricotta cheese

fresh thyme 

1. finely chop mushrooms and red onion 

2. Add 1 tbsp of olive oil to a medium pan on medium-high heat. Saute red onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes. 

3. Add chopped mushrooms and saute for 10-15 minutes. The mushrooms will cause the pan to become liquidy at first, your goal is to cook off most of the liquid

3. Add white wine, seasoning cook until white wine has cooked off a little

4. Remove from heat, mix in ricotta cheese and freshly chopped thyme 

Constructing the Ravioli 

Ingredients 

prepared pasta pieces 

prepared mushroom filling 

egg wash - 1 egg and a dash of water combined in a small bowl and beaten 

1. Place one sheet of pasta on a lightly floured surface

2. Using a cookie cutter or fancy ravioli cutter, cut out as many pasta pieces as possible. Two pieces will come together to form one ravioli

3. Take one ravioli piece, place a dollop of mushroom ricotta filling in the middle. With a basting brush, paint the edges of the pasta with the egg wash to assist with sealing

4. Place another ravioli piece on top and pinch the edges closed with a fork 

5. Place on wax paper. To prevent sticking, dust ravioli lightly with flour

Lemon Thyme Cream Sauce 

Ingredients 

3/4 cup heavy cream 

1/2 cup white wine

1/4 cup chopped red onion

fresh chopped thyme and parsley 

1 Tbsp lemon juice 

pepper 

1. Heat about 1/2 Tbsp of oil in a small sauce pan over medium heat and saute red onion for 3-4 minutes or until softened

2. Reduce head and add cream, wine and lemon. Allow sauce to slowly reduce wine by maintaining medium-low heat but preventing rapid simmering or boil 

3. stir in fresh thyme, parsley and pepper. The sauce can either be removed from heat and reheated just in time for the pasta, or kept on the element at a very low temperature to allow for flavours to mix. 

Cooking and Serving the Ravioli 

Ingredients 

prepared ravioli 

water 

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil

2. Carefully drop in ravioli. Adjust heat to maintain a steady boil (not too aggressive of a boil that it throws the ravioli around too much, running the risk of the ravioli breaking up)

3. We boiled the ravioli until they rose to the surface (approx. 5 minutes) - this is a traditional way of measuring when ravioli are finished. However - because the pasta was so thick, the ravioli really should have been boiled for another 5 minutes or so. So if you roll out your pasta with a pasta maker, you could probably stick to 'boil until floating' approach. If you rolled the pasta out by hand, I would say 10 minutes in the pot would likely do the trick. 

4. Use a straining spoon to transfer ravioli into a pasta strainer. Transfer to a bowl and coat with prepared sauce.

5. Enjoy with a crisp salad and your favourite bottle of wine! 

watching the ravioli boil

I gave this recipe a three whisk rating because the stand mixer definitely did come in handy saving me time and effort kneading the pasta dough. However, if this were a different blog with a different sort of rating I would give it a strong rating in favour of using a pasta roller to get the pasta as thin as possible. I was not very successful doing this by hand.