White Bean and Artichoke Stuffed Ravioli with a Lemon-Wine Sauce

For someone who has a deep and unabiding love for pasta, it's really sort of amazing that I've never tried my hand at making pasta from scratch ... until now, that is.

I approached this particular project with the preparation that one needs to climb Everest. I read books, searched the internet for pasta dough recipes (Spoiler Alert: after all of that researching, I ended up going with the recipe on the back of the Bob's Red Mill Semolina Flour bag. But now that I know that I can actually make ravioli, I will definitely be experimenting!), tried to come up with a tasty filling, and had a little too much fun at a cooking supplies store.

And when I was actually able to produce said raviolis, I celebrated AS THOUGH I had climbed Everest. 

I took this picture for posterity's sake.  This is also about the time I started doing my equivalent of a touchdown dance.

Now, even though I'm being a bit dramatic, don't be intimidated by ravioli-making.  It's not as complicated as I thought it would be--though it will give you a good goin'-back-to-the-good-'ol-days-and-makin'-things-from-scratch boost.  Homesteading, here we come? Er, maybe not.

While I bought a fancy-schmancy ravioli press (I bought it on sale, okay?), you don't need one. A circle-shaped cookie cutter works just fine and will give you slightly bigger raviolis (which means more stuffing in the center!)

For the filling and sauce, I wanted something simple and light so that I could spend my energy concentrating on actual ravioli formation.  The outcome was tasty and very flavorful!

So, without further ado....

White Bean and Artichoke Stuffed Ravioli with a Lemon-Wine Sauce

Pasta Dough (I used the recipe on the bag of Semolina Flour)

1.5 cups of semolina flour

2 eggs

2 tbsp of olive oil

2tbsp of water

1/4 tsp salt

Filling

1/2 cup of drained white beans (I used Great Northern)

4 artichoke hearts (canned)

1 tbsp minced garlic

2 tbsp of white wine

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup of shredded Fontina cheese (optional: You can also add shredded vegan mozzarella or no cheese at all)

Sauce

1 tbsp of butter or non-dairy butter spread

1/4 cup of the white beans with the liquid (pureed)

1 tsp of minced garlic

1/4 cup of diced onions

Juice from 1/2 lemon

1 tsp of lemon zest

1/2 cup of white wine

1 tsp of minced basil (julienne some basil for garnish!)

First, make the dough by adding all dough ingredients to a mixer with a dough hook (you can also mix by hand).  Knead the dough in the mixer or by hand for 10 minutes.  Yes, 10 minutes!  Almost every recipe I looked at gave 10 minutes as the suggested time-- it needs that time to come together as dough! Once the dough has come together, lightly flour the dough and let it rest while you work on the filling. 

In a food processor, pulse the ingredients (minus the cheese) for the filling (setting aside the 1/4 cup of beans and liquid for the sauce)until the mixture resembles as paste.  Grate the cheese and add it to the mixture.  Taste for seasonings and add as needed.

Flour EVERYTHING-- the work surface, whatever you'll be using to form the raviolis, the rolling pin, the cat--everything.  The dough is fairly sticky! Ensure that you dough is elastic by kneading it once or twice.  Start by cutting the dough in half and begin rolling out the dough until it's about 1/8th of an inch thick.  If you have a ravioli mold you'll be working with, lay the dough onto the mold, lightly pressing into the indented filling spaces (If you have dough that goes past the mold, cut that off and save it to use for more raviolis).  If you are using the cookie-cutter method, start cutting out circles from the dough. Place about 1 tsp of the filling into each of the ravioli molds--be careful not to overfill the raviolis. 

Roll out the other half of the dough until it's 1/8th of an inch thick and lay it over the mold (if you're using the cookie-cutter, you can simply make more raviolis!). Roll the flat sheet of dough over the ravioli form using a rolling pin, until the raviolis are pressed together (if you've made the cookie-cutter raviolis, you'll want to close the raviolis by lightly scoring the edges with a fork).  At this point, you will be very glad that you went on a flouring spree because you'll need to pull the raviolis out of the mold.  Place formed raviolis onto a piece of parchment paper, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil and do a quick touchdown dance. Congratulations!  You made ravioli!

For the sauce: In a food processor, process the reserved beans and liquid until creamy.  Add butter to a skillet on medium heat.  Once the butter is melted, add the garlic and onions and saute until the onions are translucent.  Add the bean cream, wine, lemon juice, and basil and simmer on low heat while you boil the ravioli.

The raviolis are usually cooked when they float to the top of the pot (make sure you test one, in case yours needs to be boiled a little longer)-- about 4 minutes. Add the raviolis and a little bit of the starchy pasta water to the sauce and let the raviolis simmer in the sauce for a couple of minutes. 

Serve warm and garnish with some basil and shredded Fontina cheese!

 

Enjoy!

Italian Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Passover friendly!)

Happy Passover to those celebrating and Happy Monday to everyone else!

I've always had mixed feelings about Passover.  On one hand, the story is pretty compelling: an enslaved people yearning for freedom from their captors, a guy who can talk to a bush and witnesses plagues of fire and bugs (and of course, death), and a fast-paced desert chase scene leading to a divinely inspired tsunami that vanquishes the foes and leads the enslaved people to freedom. 

Epic.

On the other hand, this holiday denies me bread and replaces one of my favorite foods with a tasteless, dry cracker.

Most of the time Passover is manageable--especially if you eat meat.  You simply go low carb for a week and replace your starches with meat, chicken, or fish (observant Jews do not eat pork). 

It's a little bit more complicated if you're trying to eat a mainly plant-based diet--especially if your Jewish ancestors came from Eastern Europe (making you Ashkenazic) since you're also denied kitniyot (legumes, beans, rice, corn).  Supposedly, it's because the rabbis in Eastern Europe thought these foods were too much like leavened wheat (Holy Jewish Guilt, Batman!) and decided to abstain just in case.  It's now more of a custom than anything, but it's a pretty consistent custom (Sephardic Jews, however, DO eat kitniyot).

So there you are, the plant-based food person on Passover not eating leavened wheat ANYTHING.  Nor are you eating beans, legumes, tofu, rice, or corn.  And with your hands outstretched to the heavens like Moses,  you cry out:

"What the bleep am I supposed to eat NOW?!" 

Enter your new, favorite Passover protein: quinoa.

Quinoa (a starchy seed that originated in the Andes) packs a nutritional wallop as it contains all nine essential amino acids, making it a complete protein--the only one you can get if you're a vegetarian on Passover. Quinoa also provides the bulk and protein to this Passover friendly meal.  My guinea pig friend Justin was kind enough to taste test this with me and gave it the seal of approval. So, without further ado:

 

 Italian Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
Serves 3-4

Ingredients

1 cup of chopped onions

2 tbsp of minced garlic

1 tbsp of olive oil

1.5 cups of roughly chopped carrots

2 roughly chopped zucchini

I can of artichoke hearts in water (drained)

1/2 cup red wine

1/4 cup tamari or balsamic vinegar

1 cup of cooked quinoa

1.5 cans of no salt added tomato sauce

Italian seasoning/ red pepper flakes/ salt and pepper--to taste

1/4  cup Vegan Parmesan or nutritional yeast (optional)

1 medium cabbage

1 cup of shredded mozzarella style cheeze (dairy cheese is also fine)

(for non-Passover occasions, ground seitan, tofu, white beans would work really well in this dish.  Meat eaters, feel free to add 1cup of ground meat)  

Preheat oven to 375

In a food processor, pulse the chopped carrots, zucchini and artichokes until fine and let sit while you work on the cabbage.  For the cabbage:  peel the leaves from the cabbage.  I find that it's best to cut against the stalk near the base of the cabbage and pull the cabbage leaf apart from there (instead of trying to disconnect the leaf from the top of the cabbage and potentially tearing the leaf.  Peel at least 8 leaves (the recipe I made included six rolls, but peel two extra leaves just in case you get a very small leaf or you need an extra as a back-up).

In a pot of boiling water, submerge the leaves two at a time for about a minute, or until slightly tender.  Then, drop the leaves in ice water (or very cold water) to stop cooking and let sit on a baking sheet.  In a large saute pan, saute the onion and garlic in the tbsp of oil until translucent. Add the vegetable mixture and saute for a couple of minutes.  Add the red wine, tamari/balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper to the mixture.  Let the mixture reduce (this is when you could add the seitan/tofu/meat).  Add half a can of tomato sauce to the stuffing mixture, as well as the Italian spices and red pepper flakes.  Let reduce.  

Add three ladles of the mixture into a stock pot and simmer with the can of tomato sauce.  Add the parm/yeast and season as needed (I like to add a little bit more Italian seasoning and pepper flakes here). Let simmer on low. 

Add the cup of cooked quinoa to the saute pan mixture and simmer until most of the excess liquid is gone.  Add 1/2 cup of cheeze/cheese.

Fill the cabbage leaves with the stuffing and wrap the leaves as you would a burrito.  Put each roll into a lightly greased casserole dish.  Top with the stockpot sauce and remaining cheeze/cheese.

Bake covered for 20 minutes and uncovered for 10 minutes.  Once baked, let sit for 10 minutes (the hardest part!)

Warning:  Your home will smell crazy delicious. It will drive you, your friends, your co-inhabitants, and your pets crazy.   Sorry--not sorry. 

Happy Eating!