While I was in Seattle the other weekend visiting B&D, I managed to convince them that they needed the KitchenAid Ravioli Maker. They had some pasta attachment that goes with the meat grinder, but it’s not the same. I show them the videos of Peter Pasta and they were (okay, B was) sold in much the same way I was. So that afternoon in addition to visiting the Home Cake Deocrating Supply Co, we also went to Williams Sonoma and picked up the pasta maker and the ravioli maker attachments. They have a beautiful, enormous Professional KitchenAid (which is awesome in its size) but the attachments fit all KitchenAids.
D (he’s really the cook) decided on some crab ravioli and some mushroom ravioli as testers. I don’t know which pasta recipe he used but that seemed fine.
The ravioli came out delicious. I personally preferred the crab, but then I like a little meat in my ravioli. Unfortunately, there are no pics of the ravioli in the sauce–we ate it too fast.
Now for some pictures from the creation process.
D kneads the dough using the pasta attachment for the KitchenAid.
The finished dough is all smooth and beautiful. There was some debate about whether to leave it at setting 3 or go to 4 on the KitchenAid since Peter Pasta and the KitchenAid manual say two different things. But I think the consistency of the dough matters more.
We fold the flattened dough in half and insert the fold into the ravioli maker. Start cranking the ravioli maker a bit to give it some grip and separate the two sides.
Add the hopper (yeah, that’s what they call it) to the ravioli maker and start putting stuff in it with the pointy spoon which really gets it down in there and start cranking. You can see the ravioli starting to come out the bottom.
Here are more ravioli coming out of the pasta maker. We realized after the first batch that you gotta catch them or they start to stretch out and loose the ability to hold their fillings.
Here’s a sheet of beautiful finished pasta. Aren’t the perforations cute?
We’re pulling apart ravioli. This is not as perfect a bunch as the ones above. The other ones separated super easy. These . . . a little less so. We think it was because of the consistency of the dough.
You can see the finished ravioli at the top–don’t they look great and professional? Then you just boil them like normal ravioli. Well, not quite normal. They only have to boil for about 2 minutes since they’re fresh. It’s at least some consolation since it takes a bit to make them, especially the first time.
Finally time to enjoy the raviolis in some delicious homemade tomato sauce. B also made some steamed artichokes as an appetizer which were pretty good (despite the worm we found in one of them–ewww!)
“B” is hot!!!
Of course. But I figured that was a given so I didn’t bother to mention it 🙂