La Famiglia

Hi All,

Family is something that is very important to me, and is a big part of me wanting to go part time. The idea behind me wanting these two extra days a week is so I can spend more time with my family as well as learn new things. For a long time I've wantted to learn the traditions of my family and embrace my Italian heritage. One of the more well know traditions of Italian cooking is Ravioli.

So to recap on last weeks blog I taught my self how to make fresh pasta. So when I decided I was going to take it one step further this week , i made sure of few things first. The very first thing was to make sure I had a rolling pin. I was actually able to get the one i had in high school home ec class (even still has my name on it lol) and secondly i needed a pasta machine. My mum gave me her automatic one that she's had for a couple of years , that was still in the box never used..

During the week i had come up with a recipe in my head for what i was going to make for this weeks project. I decided on a pork, basil, sun dried tomato and crumbed feta Ravioli. Sounds amazing right? Lesson one i didn't know that you had to cook the mince in the ravioli first, I thought you just mixed it all up in a bowl and spooned it on, who knew huh. lesson 2 Work fast, once you've pulled the dough out of the fridge after resting then cut into half after you've rolled that half thought the machine get straight onto rolling out the other half, if not the pasta dries out on the edges and it makes it harder to press together to seal the ravioli before boiling. And finally lesson 3 DON'T BE IN A HURRY!!! "How long does fresh ravioli take to cook?" i hear you ask, well the answer to that is as long as it takes. i was in a hurry after every batch we put in the water, i was constantly pulling a piece out to see if the pasta was cooked enough. This resulted in some great tasty soft pieces.... and some slightly bitey some what not so soft pieces, meh live and learn. But i will say one thing the flavour was as amazing as i had hoped for. The sweetness of the tomato, the fresh basil and the creaminess of the feta worked beautifully with the pork mince, yay me I'm actually kinda good at this.

The great thing about this little project was that I got to do at my mums house with my mum, then my brother and his girlfriend came over and before we knew it we had an assembly line going of people rolling, filling and the sealing ravioli. It was great to do it all together as a family, made me think that maybe somewhere in Italy there was a family sitting around a table making pasta at that very moment just like us. Hope they had as much fun as we did and at the end of it all had a great big family dinner and beautiful memory that will stay with me forever.

So onto plaining next weeks meal, I may update you all midweek to let you in on what it might be. Until then...

Talk soon
Dez