Ravioli Fun in Two Colors

Who doesn't love ravioli? I know they're one of my favorite things.  And sure, there are a few vegan ravioli options out there...but  if you have some extra time to spend in the kitchen, why not make some of your own? They're not that difficult to make (it's actually pretty fun) and, you have total control of what's in the filling...there's no end to the flavors and combos one can devise around those! They don't have to be picture perfect either, they just have to stay together while cooking and taste good.

This weekend, it so happened that I had some of that elusive stuff called spare time, so I decided to have some fun and make ravioli.  Inspired by a common pasta combo of green and yellow pasta called "paglia e fieno" or "straw and hay", I made two different doughs: a green dough  and a regular old plain pasta dough, which passes as yellow my book. (You could make it more yellow by adding some saffron, but I didn't bother with that.)

I think the green dough is traditionally made with spinach or nettles, but why not get a little crazy and try collards (or any other leafy green)?  It's not meant to impart any particular flavor--it is more for the color effect anyway.

For the dough, I usually go with Vegan Dad's recipe (Thanks Vegan Dad!), which I highly recommend. It's simple and makes a very easy-to-work-with dough. To make the green dough, I added about 12 (smallish-sized) collard greens to the regular recipe...all tolled, it was about 2 cups worth of finely chopped raw collards added to the basic recipe.

We don't have a pasta machine, but I find that provided you let the dough rest first, rolling it out by hand is just as easy.  Even if you do have a pasta machine, resting the dough is a good idea. To do this, roll the dough up into a ball, wrap it in some cellophane so it won't dry out and let it sit for 30 minutes or so. The dough becomes more relaxed and easy to work with after resting...isn't that true for us all? :)

Another important consideration is the workspace where you will you roll out the dough.  Make sure you give yourself ample room, and ideally the surface should be nice and cool...(i.e., it might not be the easiest thing to do in the midst of a heat wave). I use a granite slab pastry board that is ideal for working with doughs; it stays cool, and when lightly dusted with flour, nary a dough will stick.

In order to achieve sturdy ravioli that won't break open when you cook them, work gently with the dough, keeping a light dusting of semolina flour on your work surface and a tad bit on top of the dough and your rolling pin...you'll probably have to keep dusting it with more flour as you go. The important things are to get a uniform thickness in the dough and ensuring there are no tears or wholes in it.

Once rolled out to ~ 1/16 inch ( ~ 1.5 mm) thickness,  it may not look like a tidy bit dough to cut ravioli from, but that's easily fixed by trimming the dough to form a rectangle.

At this point, it's just a matter of dolloping the filling on in rows, placing the other half of the dough over it, and cutting out little squares.

You can make a sort of pastry "glue" by mixing some flour and water together (say 1 tablespoon flour and 2 tablespoons water) and brushing it around the dough where the edges of the ravioli will be. This will help the dough stick together.

After the squares are cut, gently reinforce the seal by pressing around the perimeter with your fingers. If you use a ravioli cutter, you get those nice little scalloped edges. (Alternately, you could make a half-moon variety of filled pasta, like the ones in this post.)

In the picture above, you can see where some flour/water "glue" is brushed around the filling.

Speaking of the filling,  I used a recipe for cashew cheese from The Conscious Cook cookbook. This recipe needs to be made in advance (you need to soak the cashews for several hours, and then another 14-16 hours for the probiotic cultures to form). Having ravioli on the brain this weekend, I started the cheese process yesterday morning. (Of course, you don't have to fill ravioli with cashew cheese, or vegan cheese of any kind for that matter...the options are limitless and up to your own taste, mood, and creativity.)

The basic method for making the cashew cheese is quite common and easily found online so I think it's safe to divulge. For instance, you can find the full recipe for the cashew cheese and what Mr. Ronnen makes with it here.

Basic cashew cheese method from The Conscious Cook, by Tal Ronnen:

Soak 2 cups raw cashews in water for 12 -14 hours. After the cashews have soaked, dissolve 1 tsp probiotic powder in 1 cup warm water, rinse the cashews and blend them in a food processor with the dissolved probiotics. Now, transfer to a clean bowl, cover and let it sit in a warm place for another 14-16 hours.

After it has set for the required amount of time...you can add in any extra ingredients you like for the filling. I didn't follow the rest of the recipe from the book, but rather added the following:

(not Tal's additions):

1/4 cup nutritional yeast
the zest and juice of 1 organic lemon
1/2 cup of finely chopped chives
1 cup diced zucchini
1 tsp sea salt (or to taste)

 lemon-chive cashew cheese with zucchini

The filling has a light lemon flavor and the zucchini pieces add a nice toothsome dimension.

Here's a shot of the top and bottom of the colored ravioli:

left=top  / right=bottom

If you wanted to get creative, you could probably come up with more artistic ways to combine the two doughs. For example, you could try overlapping strips of each dough slightly and rolling them out side by side to form one large stripey piece of dough...that would be fun. But I'll leave that for another day. I stuck with using one color of dough for the top and the other for the bottom, switching halfway through so some ravioli have green tops/yellow bottoms and some have yellow tops/green bottoms.

Here are the resulting ravioli. They're not picture perfect, but I'm pretty sure they'll hold together, and I sure hope they taste good:

ravioli colorati w/ collards and lemon-chive cashew filling

Once you have the ravioli made you can store them in the fridge for about 5-6 days, or freeze them. Freezing them is a good strategy because, in my experience, they tend to cook up better and without any breakage from a frozen state.

In order to avoid any breakages or filling mishaps, add them into gently boiling water and keep the heat such that they don't go into a rapid, rolling boil. Unlike regular unfilled pasta, ravioli don't fair too well at a rapid boil. You'll have to judge as you go how long to cook them...it will depend on the thickness of the dough and the shape/size of ravioli...but generally speaking, they are cooked when they rise to the surface...usually in about 6-8 minutes.


Ciao for now...have fun, make some ravioli!

Roseann LaPonte

Rosanne Tobin