Fancy Dinner Part 3: Goat Cheese-Arugula Ravioli with Tomato-Pancetta Butter

The full recipe is from Epicurious.

Damn, it was good.  The sauce overpowered the homemade ravioli...which took a very long time to make from scratch.  I think the sauce, which is quick, would do well with a simple pasta, and the homemade ravioli would do well with a simple sauce.  Anyway, the full recipe is linked above.


This shot was taken right before the egg escaped the flour.  It wasn't pretty.

I probably won't make pasta by hand anytime soon unless I have a pasta roller.  This was fun...but oh man, hard to roll.  The dough was so plastic it sprang back into place as soon as I lifted the rolling pin.



The filling:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 large shallots, minced
• 8 ounces arugula, chopped (about 8 cups)
• 6 ounces soft fresh goat cheese (such as Montrachet), crumbled
• 1/2 cup (about 1 1/2 ounces) freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Saute shallots 10 minutes.  Add arugula until it wilts, remove from heat, stir in cheeses.

Drop spoonfuls of the arugula/cheese mixture onto a pasta sheet, cover with another sheet, seal the edges, cut, and boil. 

(The recipe suggested adding a lot of extra melted butter to the ravioli once they were boiled and waiting for the sauce.  The recipe already has a lot of butter in it.  I found that a little goes a long way, and too much would have made this way too heavy.)

The sauce:

• 6 ounces thinly sliced pancetta* or bacon, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
• 6 large plum tomatoes, quartered, seeds and membranes discarded, tomatoes diced
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Brown the pancetta, set aside.

Using the pancetta drippings and a little butter, saute the tomatoes and thyme.  Salt and pepper to taste.

The tomatoes weren't looking too good in the store, so I used a big can of diced tomatoes.  The canned ones probably changed the recipe, but they worked surprisingly well.

Toss with some fresh basil leaves and...

 Voila!