Sausage and Mozzarella Stuffed Whole-Wheat Ravioli

     Every now and then I completely lose my mind. Last Sunday was one of those times. I decided on a fairly large-scale Italian dinner. All from scratch. Monday I talked about the meatballs and sauce. Today we're going to look at the pasta end of the meal. I've always wanted to make whole-wheat pasta and I happened to have five pounds of whole-wheat flour in the pantry. I dug around in the manual for my Kitchenaid pasta sheet roller and found a recipe for the pasta. That was the base for my ravioli. The directions assume you have a Kitchenaid mixer. If not, you're going to be doing the mixing and kneading entirely by hand.

Sausage and Mozzarella Stuffed Whole-Wheat Ravioli

Ingredients
Pasta

• 4 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons water
• 3-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling

• 1 pound Italian sausage, casing removed
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions

Filling

1. Cook sausage in pan until browned, drain excess grease
2. Reduce heat to low, add cheese and stir until cheese has melted throughout the meat. Set aside to cool.

Pasta

1. Place eggs, water, whole wheat flour and salt in mixer bowl. Attach bowl and flat beater Turn to speed 2 and mix 30 seconds.
2. Exchange beater for dough hook. Turn to speed 2 and knead for 2 minutes. Remove from bowl and hand knead for another 2 minutes. Divide dough into eight pieces before processing with sheet roller.
3. Attache the pasta sheet roller and start running the dough through. You're looking to work the dough to Roller setting 5. This is about 1/16" or so if by hand. (This dough will fight you in the sheet roller. The first couple of passes on the widest setting will still tend to shred the dough. You need to work it fairly thin before it will pass through without tearing. You're going to be doing a lot of folding and re-feeding. I hope you didn't have any other plans for the afternoon).

   

   You're going to end up with several sheets that hopefully look like this.

4. Lay out a sheet of rolled out pasta on a cutting board. Put a teaspoon of filling at regular intervals. You'll be able to get about 6 or so ready on a sheet. 

   

   This is what you should have in front of you.

5. Take a brush and dip it in some water. Paint water around the filling on the sheet. Lay another sheet over the top and press it into place. 

   

   Reference photos are proof that I care about you.

6. Get a ravioli cutter. The only reason I own one is that my wife's cousin gave me one when I mentioned I didn't own one. She's funny like that. If you don't have one, just cut it with a knife, then go around the very edge with the end of a fork to gently push the edges together and give it those fun little notches around the edge.

   

   Confession time. The wife is doing all the grunt work in these pictures. 

7. Get a big pot of water going at a rolling boil. Throw in some salt. It's pasta, don't be shy. In batches of six or so, toss the ravioli into the water. Cook them for 3-5 minutes depending on how done you want them. (We planned on finishing ours in our sauce, so we only cooked them for 3 minutes. They also freeze very well if taken out at this time.) Remove from water with slotted spoon and place in colander to drain off excess water. 

   

   Dramatic action shot.

8. At  this point, we took a cookie sheet and put down a layer of wax paper. We laid a single layer of ravioli, then another sheet of wax paper, another of ravioli...you get the idea. These wax paper sheets can then be loaded into freezer bags and put in the freezer for long term storage. You can heat them up in boiling water, cook them in sauce, or even microwave them to heat them up. This recipe will make about 60-70 ravioli. 

Good times!