Ravioli With Spinach and Ricotta Cheese Filling

In a bowl, combine flour and egg-water mixture together and mix until well incorporated. Knead the dough until well-textured and firm. The dough should not be too wet or too sticky. It should only stick to itself, but not to your hands. However, it should not be too dry, either. Make the dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough stand for 1 hour at room temperature before using. This allows gluten to work.

Heat olive oil on medium heat, add spinach and cook covered, stirring occasionally, until spinach wilted, about 15 minutes.

Cook for 5 or 10 more minutes uncovered until all liquid evaporates.

Chop cooked spinach finely and move to a bowl. Add Parmesan cheese and ricotta cheese, salt to taste and mix well. Add more salt if necessary.

After the ravioli dough has been resting at room temperature for 1 hour, divide the ravioli dough (instructions on how to make ravioli dough from scratch are above) into 2 equal halves and roll each half into a very thin sheet with a rolling pin. Make sure to have flour on hand and dust the working surface or rolling pan when necessary, because the dough will be sticky. It’s important that the ravioli dough be rolled very thinly (paper-thin), otherwise ravioli will be too solid when cooked, because dough expands during cooking. Also it will be really hard to use the ravioli mold if the dough is not thin enough.

Once you rolled sheets of dough, shape individual raviolis. To shape ravioli, I use a very handy device, ravioli mould/tray, which works great! Step-by-step photos are above the recipe box.

Here is how to use Ravioli mould:

1) dust the working tray with flour

2) lay a thin layer of pastry on the tray

3) press in the holes

4) fill the holes with the filling, without overfilling

5) cover with another layer of ravioli dough, which should lay flat all the way across the mould

6) using the rolling pins or your fingers, press, close and cut the ravioli

7) overturn the tray to let the ravioli come out

When you are done shaping ravioli, bring a big pot of water to boil, add ravioli and cook for 5 minutes, then drain. Or, alternatively, freeze ravioli until you’re ready to cook them.

Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Chop 2 tomatoes and garlic and add to the pan. Cook covered for about 10 minutes until tomatoes soften.

Add white wine and chopped thyme. Bring to boil and cook uncovered for 5 more minutes until half of liquid evaporates. Remove from heat, let it cool for a bit.

Then transfer to blender and puree the tomato mixture. Transfer the puree back to the pan, reheat to medium heat and add heavy cream. Stir until well incorporated.

Cut each grape tomato in half and add all of them to the pan with the tomato cream sauce. Salt to taste and and more chopped thyme if needed. Cook for 5 more minutes.

To serve, add cooked ravioli to the sauce at the last minute. Allow both ravioli and the sauce achieve same temperature. When serving on plates, garnish with thyme.