My Nanny, who reads my blog (Hi!) is a huge inspiration to my cooking. She played a big part in cooking when I was a child and instilled a love of food, cooking and baking into my soul. Nanny also has the most awesome tools when it comes to aiding herself in making foods. One of her favorite things to make are raviolis! Currently, I do not have one of her ravioli templates, but she has these big, square, templates that you can press lightly into the dough to mark out where the raviolis will be cut, then you can fill those areas, add another layer of dough, and press down the template again to make loads of perfectly square raviolis at once! Nanny took some pictures of these templates, the newest have been made by my uncle, and wanted me to share her recipes and this invention with you all! Her raviolis are fun to make and simply delicious. In this post, we have both the meat filling and cheese filling recipe.
Pasta Dough
The first thing that you need to make is the pasta dough, as it does need to rest, allowing you to create the fillings. This dough can be used other types of pasta as well. The semolina flour adds a bit of bite and makes this pasta far more decedent then pasta dough just made with eggs and bread flour!
Ravioli Pasta Dough
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup Semolina Flour (the good kind)
- 1 1/3 cup Flour You might need another 1/4 cup flour depending on how wet the dough is.
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1/3 cup Water
- 1 tsp Olive Oil
- 2 Eggs
Instructions
- Mix together the 1 and 1/3rd cup flour with semolina flour and salt. Make a well in the center.
- In a bowl, beat the eggs and add in the other liquids.
- Pour liquid ingredients into the well in the middle of the flour mixture.
- Knead for 3 to 5 minutes until dough is well combined. Add extra flour if needed.
- Place dough in a clean bowl and cover tightly with waxed paper. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
- Divide the dough in half, roll it out on a floured surface, and get ready to fill!
- You may want to use egg wash (a beaten egg with a splash of water) to seal the edges. It's also important to use your fingers to work out all of the air in the pocket of the ravioli.
- Once filled with desired filling, cook in boiling, salted water until the pasta is cooked through!
Meat Filling
Meat filling is my favorite type of ravioli filling. In America, we have lovely Italian sausages that add so much flavor, but as I am in the UK where there are no Italian sausages, I used my favorite sausages to do the filling. You can do the same, but Italian sausages are ideal!
Ravioli Meat Filling
Ingredients
- 3/4 pounds Half of Italian Sausage, half chop meat
- 1/4 cup Dry Bread Crumbs
- 2 tbsp Grated Parmesan Cheese
- 1 Egg
- 1 tbsp Dried Parsley Flakes
- 1/2 tsp Garlic Salt
- 1/4 tsp Pepper
Instructions
- Mix all of the ingredients together and use to fill ravioli.
Cheese Filling
Cheese filling is another family favorite, as meat and cheese raviolis are quite fun to eat together, getting a bite of meat and a bite of cheese, all covered in tomato sauce!
Cheese Ravioli Filling
Ingredients
- 3 cups Ricotta Cheese
- 1 1/2 tbsp Parmesan Cheese
- 1 1/2 tbsp Chopped Parsley (Dried Parsley is fine too)
- 3/4 tsp Salt
- 1/4 tsp Pepper
- 2 Eggs Beaten well
- some Basil This is optional. My grandma adds some.
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together and use to fill Ravioli.
We did not have the same template that my Nanny has, so instead we used a round cookie cutter. Our dough was a bit thick – you really want to roll it out as thin as paper – using a pasta machine might be best if you do not make pasta often! We served ours in a tomato sauce with a bit of extra cheese.