New Year's Ravioli

It's a new year, and that means another year to be filled with delicious foods! First dinner of 2012, homemade ravioli. It was my main dish at our Chávez christmas dinner, delicious but not so pretty. Back in San Francisco Mónico and I tried out the recipe again and finally got the knack of it, they were much prettier this time around. And very yummy, it was very hard to stop going back for just one more.


Pasta recipe very simple,

4 eggs
3 3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 tsp salt

Mix eggs, water, salt, and 2 cups flour until smooth. Gradually add the rest of the flour. refrigerate 20 minutes. THOUROUGHLY flour surface, and then Roll out 1/8 inch thickness, then flour some more.... and then a little more flour.

we used a biscuit cutter for each side of the ravioli then put filling on one side, brushed a bit of egg and water mixture on the other and pressed them together with a smaller ravioli cutter. they turned out very cute, don't you think?

Filling

Kinda just added a bunch of stuff together. Italian Sausages, browned sweet onion, spinich, tofu, salt, pepper, basil, and other things I am sure. All cut up really small. use whatever you want! yay

THIS IS THE ONLY CHRISTMAS PIC I HAVE

Ok now, fast forward a few months. Christmastime! Tara and I once again indulged in eggnog for about 3 days straight until Mama refused to get us more eggs. Well, I guess there is some debate as to whether it was really eggnog or not, as we like to add a banana into the mix and some people are in hot opposition (HATERZ) but whatevs. Anyway, we wanted to get creative with our last batch, and so what you see here is the fruit of our hard labor. Egg meringue nog! We whipped up egg whites and then folded the rest of the ingredients in after. Here it is pictured, floating on a brandy shot. YUM! James declined a full serving, Memo was polite and drank some and Mama proclaimed it was the most disgusting idea ever. Way to kill our creativity, Mama! This reminds me of the horse drawing all over again.

Paris and Felicia’s little tortilla pockets

When Felicia was visiting me, we made chiles rellenos with homemade tortillas for dinner one night. The next day we found that we had leftover everything. So for breakfast we invented these little pockets. We were quite proud of ourselves, only to find out there is a real thing very much like these. Oh well.

We started with:
Grilled Poblano Peppers
Cheese (In this photo I used Mexican cheese)
Tortilla dough (see my last post)
Some Chorizo (already cooked)
and Cilantro (AKA Coriander).

I chopped the cilantro and cut the pepper into strips (peel off the skin first). Then we flattened out some tortillas, just like normal (see making corn tortillas). The I would takes some chorizo, a slice of the pepper, a sprig of cilantro, and some cheese and place it in the middle and seal it up like a ravioli or Chinese dumpling.

I try to get it as flat as possible, so that it can cook evenly on the comal. You cook it just as you would a tortilla, but you might need to press down on the edges to make sure they cook, as it is not completely flat.

They are done when the outside looks just like a cooked tortilla. Later, at the suggestion of my friend Dominick, I tried frying them, which turned out really well!

I like to make a few of both kinds, and sit down to watch a movie with these as snacks.

When you bite into one and get melted cheese, chorizo, poblano and fresh cilantro flavors, it makes you so happy. A caveat though, the raw forms so not store in the refrigerator well. I would cook it slightly. then store it.