Cooking up a storm

I finally managed to have a weekend at home and what's my favourite thing to do? Well if you know me well you would have guessed correctly......

cooking!

After a night in Sydney on Friday and a fabulous dinner at Neil Perry's Spice Temple  (where the great man himself was having dinner with his 2 girls) it was good to get back to the country and after a foray at Harris Farm markets for some ingredients it was time to hit the kitchen and make..........

Chicken, Fetta, Rocket and Pistachio ravioli with a truffle butter white wine cream sauce.

(what a mouthful, if I say so myself) anyway here's the steps in case you would like to try this at home.

What you need to make the pasta

400 grams of Plain Flour
2 eggs
Water  about 100 ml
15 ml of Olive Oil

I put all this into my Thermomix but if you don't have one you can do it with a food processor, kitchen aid or with your hands. I 'm not really good on measuring things, I sort of go with the flow and the feel, so you might need a bit more flour or a bit more or less of the old water, you want it to be a solid dough consistency, see pic below

my pasta dough after a couple of minutes kneading

Now if you have a pasta machine you can put it through that, but if you don't it's not an issue you can use the old fashioned method of rolling it out with a rolling pin 

rolling out the old fashioned way

My pasta machine (shush, its from Aldi, don't tell anyone!)

So once you get it rolled out to about the thickness of a sheet of prepared lasagna then you can put it all together...

I love my gadgets.. and I got this fancy ancy pasta hanging thingy from our local cookshop with a voucher my lovely mother in law gave me for my birthday! In the old days I used to hang the pasta on our indoor drying rack, so it's ok anyway you do it!

so now to quote Heston this is where the magic happens!

I bet you thought I was going to make the filling from scratch ? Well I'm here to tell you that although I love to cook there are somethings that you can take advantage of, like using lovely prepared sausages for your fillings! And the beauty of it is that your fillings are only limited by your imagination (or what you can find in sausages!)

so this is what I used this time

I got these from my local Harris Farm Markets. I really love sausages and it's on my list to do a sausage making course.

Anyway open the sausages and get the filling out, discard the cases.

Whack it in the frypan and cook it off.

while its doing that ( keep an eye on it, you don't want it to be overcooked or burnt) you can make your ravioli.

After you have rolled out the pasta, you have to have two flat pieces of dough one for the bottom and the filling and the top one to seal it.

I've have this little roller thing but you can just use a knife to cut them into shape.

Here is my finished product!

I made enough pasta dough for 5 meals plus 3 lasagnas

Put into a saucepan of boiling water and when they rise to the top they are cooked!

Here they are waiting for their sauce!

start with a  bit of butter in a saucepan, if you want to use flavoured butter like Lurpack garlic butter it's good. I'm using  both Lurpack and my own truffle butter
then I add some white wine, dried porcini mushrooms and then some cream

 and then you have your dinner, it might seem complicated but believe me, its really easy to make your own pasta, and its great fun! Especially with some great music on and some wine to help the creative juices flow!