Guest Post: Mushroom and Mascarpone Ravioli

Since I've been out of the country, packing for our move, and will be losing internet access tonight (yikes!), my sister Lisa and her boyfriend Steve offered to do a guest post for me! They are both fantastic cooks, as I've mentioned before (here, here, and here), and have great palates, so you're in for a treat with this recipe. Hope to see you all soon with a recipe from my NEW kitchen! :)

Since Meghan will be busy packing and moving this week, I thought I would help her out by offering her this recipe to post. Steve and I had some mushrooms in the fridge that we wanted to use, so we decided to make mushroom ravioli. We found a recipe for Mushroom and Mascarpone Ravioli on allrecipes.com and thought it would be perfect since we had a container of the cheese in the fridge as well. It sounded so good and we had never made homemade ravioli before, so I was really excited to try this recipe out!

We had to make a few substitutions and slight changes because we didn’t have a couple of the ingredients, but overall we stayed fairly true to the recipe. One major change, however, was to use homemade pasta instead of the wonton wrappers. Steve got a pasta roller for Christmas, and we’ve wanted to make ravioli with it. The pasta can be topped with any sauce you want, but we topped it with just a little olive oil, chopped cherry tomatoes, black pepper, and Parmesan cheese. The filling of this ravioli is the real star of the recipe, so I would recommend trying to follow the filling recipe as best as you can to get the amazing flavor it adds. Some of the reviewers on allrecipes.com said this was the best ravioli filling they had ever eaten. I would have to agree! It really is that good!

If you use homemade pasta for the ravioli, I recommend making the pasta dough first and then making the filling while the dough is resting. Then you can roll out the pasta and fill it with the mixture. Enjoy!

Homemade Pasta

Ingredients:
In general, use 100 oz (about 1 cup) all-purpose flour for every 1 egg. For this recipe we used:
400 oz (about 1 cup) all-purpose flour
4 eggs
Extra flour for flouring countertop, dough, and pasta machine

Directions:
1. Put flour into a large bowl. In separate bowl, whisk eggs together.

2. Make a large well in the center of the flour and pour the eggs into the well.

3. With a fork, mix the flour into the eggs in the well. Continue mixing until the flour and eggs form a dough.

4. Shape the dough into a ball and knead it by hand on a floured countertop for 5 – 7 minutes. If the dough gets too dry, wet your hands and continue to knead. Alternately, if the dough is too sticky, add a little flour. Note: You want to have a pasta dough that tends on the dry side as it will need to be this way in order to not stick to your pasta maker, roller, etc.

5. Cover the pasta dough with the inverted bowl and let rest for one-half hour.

6. When dough has rested, slice into around 6 equally-sized pieces (to give you a top and bottom to your ravioli). Roll each piece of dough through the floured pasta roller. (Our roller has settings 1-9, and we rolled the dough up to a 6.)

7. Lay pasta sheets separately on a floured surface. (This is very important because we laid ours on top of each other and they stuck together. We had to re-roll the dough.)

Mushroom and Mascarpone Ravioli

4 servings

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 large shallots, minced (We only had one shallot)
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, chopped (We used white mushrooms and shitakes)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme (We substituted one-quarter tablespoon of finely chopped dried thyme)
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives (We substituted 1 green onion)
1 (8 ounce) container mascarpone cheese
salt and pepper to taste
32 (3.5 inch square) wonton wrappers (We made our own pasta instead – See recipe above)
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons milk

Directions:
1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shallots; cook and stir until starting to brown. Reduce the heat to medium and add the mushrooms, thyme, garlic and chives; continue to cook until the liquid from the mushrooms has evaporated, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together the mascarpone cheese and mushroom mixture. Season to taste with salt and pepper; set aside.

3. *Lay out 16 wonton wrappers on a clean surface. Whisk together the egg and milk in a small cup. Brush the egg wash onto the wrappers. Place one tablespoon of the cheese mixture onto the center of each square. Place a second wonton wrapper over the top of the filling and press to seal the edges. You may refrigerate the ravioli on a baking tray covered with plastic wrap.

4. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the ravioli one at a time and cook until they float to the top, 3 to 4 minutes. (We cooked our ravioli at a simmer for about 10 minutes as recommended by a reviewer to prevent ravioli from opening up.)

5. Top with a little olive oil, pepper, and Parmesan cheese (or any other sauce) and enjoy!

*Step 3, if using homemade pasta: Drop the filling mixture by tablespoons onto one of the pasta sheets, leaving 1-2 inches between each spoonful. Whisk together the egg and milk in a small cup. Brush the egg wash onto the sheet in between and around the filling, wherever dough is exposed. Place another pasta sheet on top of the first, and press the top sheet onto the second, being careful not to press the filling out from the sheets. Press around the filling to form the pockets of filling. Use a biscuit cutter, pasta cutter, or scalloped edge cookie cutter to cut around each pocket of filling, forming the ravioli.

Source: Adapted from Allrecipes.com