Muy Bueno!

Who doesn’t love fresh pasta? This week I channelled my inner Italian and became a pasta-making queen.  This week’s menu included homemade ravioli. I have made fresh pasta before but never a delicious pocket filled pasta. So I started with making the insides of my ravioli using swiss chard, onion and parmesan cheese.  I sauteed the  onions and swiss chard and let them cool as I started making my pasta.

Pasta dough, much like any other dough is quite simple to make. It only takes a couple of ingredients and a lot of love…kneading. I kneaded until my arm was sore,  then let the dough sit for half of an hour. I got the recipe offline from the Food & Wine website (a fantastic magazine resource for food lovers).  I purchased a pasta sheeter a couple of years ago and today I put it to good use.Looking like an old Italian lady with flour everywhere, in my hair,  on my face and all over the kitchen, I slowly and surely rolled the dough thinner.  In the future I plan on getting technology to help me out; Ill be buying a Kitchenaid  mixer that comes with a pasta sheeter attachment.

Pasta sheeter hard at work.

Fill, fill, fill it up.

Its ready when floating!

The most difficult part about ravioli is putting the filling in the dough and having to seal it with an egg wash, pinch it together with hands or fork and hope that all your hard work isn't destroyed the minute you drop it in boiling water. If not sealed properly your ravioli will leak and get filled with water which doesn't make for a tasty piece of ravioli. 

One of the best things about homemade pasta is that it cooks in only a couple of minutes. You know when your dough is done because it floats to the top of the boiling water. The ravioli was tossed with our homemade tomato sauce that my Mom and I made this past summer.  I also paired it with my homemade vegan caesar salad dressing. The raw (local) garlic will ward off any kind of cold this time of year.

Memories of summer, tomato sauce.

After my pasta making escapade,I’m going to relax and indulge in a glass of vino. 

Beans, capers, trout...oh my!

Nicoise Salad.

The French do it right. Foie gras, duck confit and charcuterie are just some of the French foods or French cooking concepts I have come to love. This week I was craving what I call a substantial salad. A substantial salad is the kind of salad you can eat for dinner that incorporates all of the food groups. It's not your basic lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumber kinda salad.

 I've never made a nicoise salad (pronounced nee-suaz). So all day Monday (my experimental cooking day) I called around St. Catharines looking for a reputable grocery store and fish monger who sold fresh, sashimi grade tuna. Unfortunately,  in the middle of January the only place that had some was Sobey's. It was previously frozen from the Philippines and was not sashimi grade. So needless to say I did not buy that to put on top of my salad. Many recipes also suggested using canned tuna, but in my mind that seemed like it was going to taste disgusting and ruin the beautiful salad. With an even more beautiful name. I decided on some fresh trout instead of tuna and I thought it tasted great! So here MY version of the beautifully sounding and tasting nicoise salad.

Find your inner Julia Child in you and make some French food. Find the recipe here.