guess who's coming to dinner...?

this last week was maya's mid-winter break.  when the hell did mid-winter breaks start anyways and how come i didn't have them when i was in school?  christmas vacation and then mid-winter break at the end of february.  must be nice.  except for the fact of being in school waaaaay into june.  we were always done with school about mid-may.  sweet.  anyway, she was off school so her grandmother, lucy, came up from san diego to visit.  lucy is diana's mother and has never been over to our house because diana blah blah blah ad nauseum.  so alistair invited her over to dinner to see the other half of maya's life.  not wanting to eat brown rice and tofu, i decided to make dinner.  handmade spinach and cheese ravioli with a brown butter pecan sauce.  roasted asparagus.  green salad.  should be fine.  

i've made homeade ravioli before because we have a pasta maker and also a ravioli press thingy.  so before i got too far into it, i remembered la camera.  i don't think too many people make pasta from scratch anymore.  but there is no comparison between fresh pasta and dried from the store.  it's quite easy to make, just time consuming.

first, i made the dough, let it sit for a couple of hours, mixed up the filling (spinach, egg, parmesan, ricotta, nutmeg, salt and pepper) and then started sending the dough through the pasta maker:

then i started making the ravioli.  first laying one sheet down on the bottom of the ravioli press thingy, then adding the filling and then another sheet on top and then pressing and cutting at the same time with a rolling pin:

and voila!  ravioli!

i ended up with a nice plate full, enough to feed all four of us.  i tossed them in flour to keep them from sticking to each other since i wasn't going to cook them until the next evening.

after making a bunch of pretty perfect ravioli, i did a really dumb thing.  wrapped it in PLASTIC and put it in the fridge.  plastic.  not a good idea.  kept all that moisture in.  which made it all stick to fucking gether.  which i did not realize until the next night right before i went to toss it in the boiling water.  i tried to unstick them.  pointless.  just a big gummy mess.  so i just tossed it all in the boiling water and hoped for the best and that they all would somewhat unstick from each other and cook well.

not bad:

they kind of came out more like little dumplings, but they still tasted damn good.

dinner was good, i stopped being nervous about diana's mother being in our house (so weird!) and enjoyed the evening.  lucy's a very nice woman and i really hope she comes back over the next time she's in town.  we had a good visit :)

now next week when my mom and debbie are in town and i make ravioli again (different filling this time!) i WILL NOT stick them in plastic.  duh.