Recently I became the proud owner of a pasta maker. His name is Leonardo and so far he has done good work. Homemade pasta isn´t that hard to make but it takes a while and one definetely needs patience. Sometimes it might take longer because your dough consists of a mass of crumbs. Sometimes the ravioli you carefully made yourself decide to open up while cooking and everything floads around in the pan. Or everything sticks together like crazy. But life is not always easy and every desaster helps to prevent future ones. So don´t give up! You will get there! Trust me! I´ve done everything mentioned above and more.

This recipe was inspired after a visit in a local italian restaurant. I thought…hey, I could do that. Well, in the end, my friend and I spend at least three hours in the kitchen trying to prepare ravioli for six persons. But it wasn´t even that bad and came kind of close to the original recipe. So this time, with all my pasta-making-experience in mind, let´s try again.

Obviously, the dough is the most important thing. It usually consists of flour and eggs, to make the pasta more al dente you can add semolina. (I am not quite sure of the correct translation. I know that there are two types of semolina and for pasta you need the “durum” one, not the one usually used for desserts.) For this recipe I used 150 g flour, 50 g semolina, 2 eggs, salt and a little bit of olive oil. That should make pasta for about 4 persons. Mix the ingredients well and knead for a couple of minutes until it is nice and shiny.

The ravioli are filled with 300 g ricotta cheese, a little bit of parmesan, salt and pepper and everything you want. You can add sun-dried tomatos, rocket, spinach, herbs, mushrooms, eggplant…whatever you like. For the sauce we need one onion and garlic, fresh tomatos and rocket and some pine nuts. I can´t exactly tell you the amount of each ingredient, just use what you would consider enough.

Use the pasta maker to roll out the dough until it is the thinnest. Then, form little ravioli. You can use a knife or a special ravioli-maker, it works either way. It´s best to gather the ravioli on a plate, using baking paper to seperate the different layers. The ravioli are cooked a couple of minutes in boiling water, they are done when they start swimming at the top.

In the meantime it is time to prepare the sauce. Roast the onion and the garlic in olive oil. Add vegetable broth and butter and let simmer. Then, add the tomatos and let cook until they start to become soft. Once the ravioli are done, take them out of the water, add to the sauce and let them cook for a couple more minutes. In the meantime, also add the rocket, salt and pepper and pine nuts. Serve everything with fresh rocket and parmesan cheese.