Ravioli

When I was a child my ravioli came from one person, a chef name Boyardee. It was simple to make and came in a can, so storage was never an issue. It was simply one of my favorite can goods and maybe one of my favorite foods. Its' delicious mystery meat (I mean what is really inside?) and red sauce that always seemed to end up on my clothes somehow always made my day. I have since realized that maybe my favorite chef isn't really that great after all...

Towards the end of my basics class in culinary school we had pasta day. Making pasta from scratch blew my mind at that moment, I mean pasta came from a box. I could not even imagine making ravioli, and I was trying to figure out in my head what could be in Chef Boyardee's recipe so I could replicate it. Luckily our assignment was to make fettucine and leave the ravioli making to our instructor. Pasta day came around and Chef Foote made an amazing lobster ravioli. It was savory, gooey and most of all delicious. In one small second my favorite chef had been booted from the top. I knew that never again would the mystery meat and sloppy red sauce satisfy me. It was a joyous moment for my taste buds and a miserable one for my heart.

Since that day my ravioli have been filled with anything but mystery meat.

I made mushroom ravioli with a friend. We had to roll and cut the pasta by hand and it was a pain. I can't believe we spent that time to do it. I am still impressed with us today and even more impressed that my dear friend still makes that ravioli today by hand. I made an simple Parmesan cream sauce to have with it and it was sure tasty.

My family could be classified as carnivores at times, so when making ravioli for them it could only have one thing in it, MEAT. I made a ground beef, Italian sausage, Parmesan cheese, and spinach (only a little though because it's green and we all know about green veggies...). While similar to my once favorite ravioli...it was different because I could identify everything in this ravioli. This was a much simpler ravioli to make than the first because I have acquired a pasta roller and ravioli press. I have made this ravioli a few times now and it is a favorite with the meat lovin' crowd.

Within a month of working at the restaurant my Chef had me make potato-leek raviolo (aka huge ravioli). It came with a egg yolk sitting in the top of the filling, something I was not keen on, especially when it was still runny when you cut into it. Bravely I tried it though and it was so good. It make that divine lobster ravioli seem just ok. My taste buds were once again on cloud nine.

This past week, we decided to make raviolos again. We didn't have any leeks so we decided asparagus sounded good. This raviolo was made with asparagus, potatoes, parmesan cheese and our house-made ricotta. It also had an raw egg yolk on top again, something that I was much fonder of after tasting the leek-potato one. Our sous chef ha the great idea to top it with french fried onions (made from scratch of course) and then to add some color we decided to add some fried rosemary. It was also finished in brown butter, which I add is the best way to have butter.

We all quickly grabbed forks deciding to test one. We were like lions ravishing our prey. The raviolo was quickly destroyed. It was beyond delicious. If there is a cloud ten my taste buds and heart were on it (as well as everyone else's. We sold out of them in just a short 90 minutes). I couldn't believe that anything could taste this good. It was hot, gooey, very green and a little bit of heaven in my mouth.

I have had dreams about these raviolo for days now. I have made about a 100 at work and ate more than one. Thoughts of green goo and french fried onions have consumed far too many moments in my life the last four days. My taste buds are craving a new exciting recipe and Chef Boyardee has been forgotten.

Cluck! Cluck!

It seems that food is always on my mind....whether because I am starving, because I am cooking, or because of the tantalizing smells coming from the restaurant's many ovens or stoves. There is one ingredient however that runs through every vein of the restaurant and one that I personally use more than I would have ever dreamed possible.

Eggs are a food we all know about. In fact, most of us probably have some in our fridges right now. They are one of those three items that are always on the grocery list--milk, bread and yes eggs. I grew up with eggs in my home in abundance. We had scrambled eggs for breakfast, the occasional quiche and many cakes and cookies. The only sad fact is I hate eggs although it might be more accurate to say that eggs hate me. Throw them in something sweet and cover them with sugar and I am great, but make me an omelet or a quiche and there is just no way I will eat them. Eggs and I share a mutual understanding with one another. We agree to be nice to each other with out crossing the line, until recently.

Eggs are like potatoes. They can be used many ways themselves and with salt become enjoyable. We scramble, poach, fry, sunny side, over many ways and sometimes use them raw just to name a few ways. Eggs are versatile by themselves but where they begin to amaze me is just how many things eggs work their way into.

We use a lot of eggs at the restaurant. I knew this, it has always been apparent especially since I began making the breads and pasta. I use between 100-150 eggs a day...yes a day not a week but a day. That is just me. I can't account for the eggs that are used for our finishing and our dishes on the line. That's just me for breads and for pasta. It amazes me everyday I can use over 12 dozen eggs.

This weekend or really Saturday paints the perfect picture of eggs being used for anything and everything you can imagine. Get ready to count the ways.

For Easter we made Easter baskets for all the children who came to the restaurant that were 12 and under. The contained many goodies the first being colored eggs (1). I had the opportunity to color eggs and get paid. It was great, until I realized I had to color 100. The baskets all had sugar cookies (2) in them as well. They were butterfly and flower shaped. They were so fun to make and very fun to decorate.

In addition to my Easter fun, I did my typical prep as well. Our egg problem really became apparent to me on Saturday within an hour of being at work. I arrived to find our Sous Chef already working steadily on desserts. He had made Bread Pudding (3), was working on cheesecake (4) and had eggs out for one batch of our challah (5) bread.

Our produce man arrived shortly after me and rescued us from our empty egg shelf. He brought 15 dozen eggs with him to use in addition to the 7 or 8 dozen we already had already claimed among ourselves. Within 15-20 minutes every egg, new and old, was gone. I had claimed 200 for pasta (6) and yet more bread (7). Our line cooks had claimed many more dozen for scrambled eggs (8), omelets (9) and any other egg dish our customers wanted for brunch(10). One of our dinner cooks had also claimed at least a couple of dozen for our lunch and dinner sauteed mushrooms (11) and for finishing one of our pastas (12).

25 minutes later we were all paused in our work. Everything we started to make we soon realized we needed eggs. We sent someone out to get more and we all had a few minutes to rest while waiting for more eggs to make more bread pudding (13), more bread (14) and shortly we need more eggs on the line for our various other egg endeavors (15, 16, 17...and so on)

I think it's safe to say, eggs are vital to our operation, and while eggs and I will not be friends anytime soon, this weekend I bow to them and their many uses that make so many tasty and delicious foods.