We made homemade ravioli last week.

We’d made our own pasta a few times in the last year or so, but we avoided ravioli for several reasons:

The filling — what to put in it?

The work — we’ve been told by others that they are extremely labor intensive

The unknown — we didn’t know what we didn’t know about making ravioli from scratch.

But we have a secret weapon. A family member who’s made thousands of them in her lifetime. Or at least been a helper. She knew what we didn’t know.

So we made a trip and combined her family recipe with our new pasta roller attachment.  I failed to get many pictures of the process and the finished product but we did bring some home, so I’ll do better when we eat the next batch.

The old family recipe made 1000 raviolis. We cut that by 75% and aimed for 250. We ended up with just under 200. Our mentor had her old family roller. But since we weren’t doing 1000, we tried to use this new-fangled Raviolera. It’s a metal form. In theory, you lay your pasta sheet on the form, fill the divots, top with another layer and then use a small rolling pin to fasten the whole thing together. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I don’t know if it’s a design flaw or a production flaw, but the ridged edges are not high enough to cut through the ravioli. Instead, we had to pry each ravioli out, one at a time, after running a knife along the edges to be sure we had a clean cut. We tried it a couple of times, with the tray dry, with it oiled and with floured and oiled. The flour and oil yielded the squares a bit more easily, but not enough to make that process worthwhile. That thing is going back to the store.

Then we used an individual cutter: This one looks like it should have taken a long time, since we were stamping twice, once on the first layer, then again after placing a bit of filling on the dough. But it ended up being much quicker than having to pry the others out of that contraption.

We used a filling of chicken and pork. Stud Muffin seared the meat, then they were pulsed together in a food processor. Seasonings, spinach, cream and butter were added. A dollop of the filling was placed on each square. We brushed a little water along the edges, to be sure and get a good seal. Then we cut out the squares.

The raviolis then went in the freezer. Once frozen, we put them in bags and then back into the freezer for storage. Except for that night’s dinner. We boiled them for a few minutes and served them with red sauce and parmesan cheese. We even found an Italian red wine to go with the dinner.

A little bread, a little salad, a little wine, a little pasta.

Maybe the perfect meal.