Today we made spinach and ricotta ravioli, all from scratch of course!
To start here is my recipe for homemade wholewheat pasta and I promise its super easy and super quick!
Filling:
200g quark or ricotta or any other cream cheese of choice
250g baby leaf spinach
1tbs nutmeg
Pinch of salt & pepper
Sauce:
400g of chopped tomatoes (I use a tin of plum because they’re full of flavour!)
1tbs of tomato purée
1 clove of garlic
1 vegetable stock cube crumbled
1 tbs sugar of choice or sweetener
2tbs of chopped basil (I buy the frozen stuff as it so cheap and easy… No waste!)
What you need to do:
Once you have made the pasta dough and it is resting done then its time to make the filling! (Click on link above)
Cook the spinach in a pan with just a pump of oil. It will look like a huge amount of spinach but believe me it does wilt down… A lot! Cover pan with a lid until wilted.
In a bowl put the quark cheese and spinach together and slowly begin to mix. I found the best way to get it to blend was to squash the mixture together with the back of a spoon.
When mixed together it’s time to season. I added salt, pepper and nutmeg. It adds just another dimension of flavour, I also think lemon would work well!
So now it’s time to roll out the pasta!
I cut the pasta into two smaller chunks to make it easier to pass through the pasta machine. Start off on the largest setting to roll the dough to a flat sheet.
Gradually change the machine so the dough becomes thinner. We found that it was the perfect thickness when you were able to see your hand through the dough like this…
(This was on number 6 on our pasta machine)
We found that it was better to cut the sheets into two shorter pieces after rolling to be able to make it more manageable… However if you wanted to make spaghetti and linguini you probably don’t want to do that.
Turning this into a dish:
We tried several way to fill our ravioli and we found this to be the easiest and quickest method.
Lay one sheet out and fold it in half. Mark the halfway point in the dough with a knife. Fold the dough out flat again. This is where you need to decide how big you want your ravioli.
My filling was around the size of a 50p coin. We spaced ours out so there was around 3cm around the filling… This allowed enough space to seal the pasta. We only had to use a teaspoon to place the filling on the pasta sheet.
Once finished laying out the filling fold over the pasta so the filling is in the middle. Now you need to press the dough around the filling lightly. Now cut around the filling into your desired shape.
Once cut press around the edges of your dough firmly to fully seal the ravioli.
For the sauce:
Add the garlic to a pan with two pumps of oil.
Once starting to brown add the tomato purée.
After around 3 minutes add the tin of tomatoes and heat through.
Add the crumbled vegetable stock cube and throughly mix in.
Stir regularly for 5 minutes.
Stir through the sugar/sweetener and taste. Season at this point if it needs it.
Depending on how you like your sauce, use a hand blender to mix it all together. Stir through the basil at the end.
To cook:
Add to a pan of boiling water and cook for around 5 minutes. Then drain the water away.
To dish up:
Divide the pasta amongst the bowls and drizzle the sauce over the top. I served mine with some low fat mozzarella cheese and a couple of grinds of pepper.
I hope you enjoy this dish and it truly is satisfying to enjoy such a wholesome dish made from scratch.
fitnessfoodfunlove 