Potato and Fennel Ravioli

Over the rainy weekend Brett and I decided to make homemade ravioli again. The last time we made it we had to hand roll the pasta dough and it ended up being too thick. This time we had our pasta machine to help with the rolling (although it is not an easy process) and we decided to go with a roasted veggie filling.

I had seen a recipe with potato and fennel filling, but they were boiled. I wanted the extra flavor from roasting. I cut up a couple of red potatoes, one very small onion, and one fennel bulb, and threw in two cloves of garlic. I drizzled everything with olive oil, sprinkled salt and pepper, and baked them for 1 hour in a 350 degree oven. I was taking a big risk here because neither of us had ever had roasted fennel before. But when it came out of the oven we both tasted it and actually liked it!

I pureed the roasted veggies in my mini food processor which did not go well at all. It made a really sticky, thick mess and somehow got up inside the blade holder and down onto the base. I have no idea how, but it was a mess to clean up.

Brett was in charge of making the pasta dough. After I ruined it the last time we tried, he has forever earned the job of pasta maker in our household. We decided to go with the second thinnest setting because our filling was pretty thick.

With the sheets all rolled, I began scooping tiny balls onto the pasta dough using the squares on our rolling mat as a guideline.

I brushed egg wash onto the edges and between the balls and then covered it all with another, slightly larger, pasta sheet. I pressed carefully and tried to push out most of the air. Then I used a pastry cutter to cut the ravioli apart. They were so cute!

We boiled them for a few minutes even though they rose to the top almost immediately. I have no idea how to tell if they were over or under-cooked.

Since Brett is picky about his sauces, we dressed them simply with butter and parmesan cheese. They tasted very good! We decided that the dough could have been a little bit thinner.

The next day we made ravioli again because we had a lot of leftover filling. We did make thinner sheets, however the sheets were too thin and unmanageable at times. We need an in between setting!