090417_ravsSo many awesome and wonderful and maybe a little scary crazy have jumped in to keep the fires a-burnin’; my sabbatical may be longer than planned, just so I can publish everyone’s glittering contributions.  Or maybe I need to come back sooner, because I’m definitely getting one-upped by 1 or 2 people.  Or several people. Or everyone.  Seriously, people. Dial it down.

One-upping me today is Minimally Invasive‘s Amy.  Hopefully, I’ll be having dinner with her and cook eat FRET this Friday if I can kick this fucking chest cold.  Which better be just a cold, because if I have to deal with Swine Flu on top of everything else I will be PISSED.

Hi, everyone! It’s Amy, from Minimally Invasive. In a shocking display of poor judgment, Michelle’s agreed to let me post here while she’s taking a well-deserved break.

Honestly, it’s awfully big of her to overlook the fact that I don’t have an inner nonna she’d approve of in any way. Instead, I have an inner grand-mère who remains a tête dur, only recently coming around to the wonders of caramelizing tomato paste in a hot spot of the pan, and still insisting on starting nearly every tomato gravy with a roux. Sigh, I know. But I’m teaching her, I really am, through judicious applications of Lidia, Mario and Patricia recipes. Recently, I made a ragu bolognese that would make the angels weep and a linguine with lemon-pistachio cream sauce that did not suck even a little. Remember, set the bar low, kids! Not sucking is the skill set most easily attained.

But what’s helped me most is my new set of Kitchenaid pasta rollers. They’re going to pay for themselves before long, probably not before I outgrow all of my clothes, but still …. they’re a wonder. I was feeling raviolish last weekend and, inspired by the suddenly springlike weather, I decided to adapt a vegan sweet pea ravioli recipe to allow for copious amounts of sheep’s milk ricotta.

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I still had some dough in the freezer from my last pasta-making exercise, so the only trying part was running the cooked peas through the food mill. That’s messy work, no matter how you cut it, but the results were well worth the cleanup required.

recipe after the jump

Summer Pea Ravioli adapted from Vegan Visitor

Honestly, I make my pasta dough a little differently every time and don’t remember the proportions I used, exactly. But this is a pretty basic recipe that sounds about right. I substituted a little semolina flour for some of the AP and rolled it out to the #6 setting because I don’t have the stones yet to go to #7.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large shallots, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups green peas (fresh or frozen)
1 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon dry vermouth
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 cup sheep’s milk ricotta
2 tablespoons butter

To prepare the peas, heat the oil in a large pan. Sauté shallots and garlic until soft and translucent, then add the vermouth and cook until liquid has evaporated. Add peas, water, herbs, salt and pepper and simmer until liquid is reduced by half.

Purée the peas in a food processor on high or through a food mill. If you used a food processor, layer a mesh sieve over a bowl and push the mixture through the sieve. Keep the solids in the sieve (or bowl of the food mill) for the filling and reserve the liquid in the bowl for the sauce.

Roll pasta into thin sheets. Combine the pea purée solids with the sheep’s milk ricotta and adjust seasoning if necessary.

Dot the pea purée by the tablespoonful along the first sheet of pasta.

With a water and a pastry brush (or your finger), dampen the edges around the purée. Lay another pasta sheet on top and with your fingertips, push out any air and seal the edges around each. With a roller or ravioli cutter, cut out each piece. Repeat the process until all of the filling is used up.

Cook the ravioli in a large pot of rapidly boiling water for about 2-3 minutes or until they all float.

Meanwhile, heat the reserved, strained pea liquid. Once it’s simmering, add 2 tablespoons of vermouth and cook for a few minutes to evaporate some of the alcohol. Add 2 tablespoons of butter to enrich the sauce and adjust seasoning.

Remove the ravioli from the water with a slotted spoon and plate over the sauce. Garnish with fresh pea shoots, minced chives, and/or cracked pepper, if desired.