Making Ravioli
September 24, 2008
Cooking with kids can be so much fun! I have been trying to come up with creative ways to keep my daughter busy. Cooking and baking are fun, time consuming and creative ways to spend time together while discovering culinary delights.
 Every year, friends of mine have a huge ravioli making party. I was thinking about them the other day and started to crave pasta. We had a friend over and decided to make some for ourselves.
Instead of making the ravioli from scratch, which is really enjoyable but takes awhile, we used wonton wrappers, some cheesy fillings, a raw egg and a paint brush to make a yummy supper and had a ton of fun.
We started by making the filling. There are lots of great rav ioli filling recipes in books and online. I like www.epicurious.com and vegetariantimes.com. Most of the time I just throw some fresh ingredients together. This particular day we used ricotta, toasted pine nuts, garlic, fresh basil from the garden and parmessan. Using butternut squash or sweet potato, a little maple syrup, shallots, sage, pine nuts and garlic is really good too.
After the filling was made we set it in the middle of the table, cracked an egg into a little bowl and whisked it, (vegans & non-egg people can use water) and opened our package of wonton wrappers. We spread them out in front of us and used a pizza roller to cut them in half. Then we used a cooking brush to paint egg on the four edges of the wonton rectangle. The egg acts as glue to keep them from coming apart while boiling.
Then it was time to place a little teaspoon size dollop (although kids seem to like to add more, which is interesting too) of filling on one end of the wrapper. Then we folded over the wonton, covering the filling, and used a fork to press down all  sides of our beautiful little squares of ravioli.
We were able to use all of the wontons and still had a little filling left over. A little filling goes a long way. We placed each ready ravioli on a tray and separated the layers with wax paper.
When everything  was ready, we boiled some water and added some of our fresh pasta, let it cook for a few minutes and then strained it and served it with tomato sauce. Delicious!
The ravioli we didn't boil went into the freezer for another day.
I think that when kids can be apart of preparing meals, they learn to appreciate food. It can get the entire family wondering about where the ingredients come from, and feeling the enjoyment that can be found in making, smelling and tasting a meal that was made together.
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