Saturday 18 July 2015

Crab & Salmon Ravioli


This is a re-working of something the TD found and printed off for me, and which I then amended to be more user-friendly for a busy kitchen. The original used sea bass in the stuffing and had a rather complicated sauce, using diced squid and lemon grass, and it all seemed much more than a person wanted to be bothered with at this time of year, with temperatures every day somewhere in the mid thirties, and food something of no interest whatsoever before the sun has gone down at around 9.00 in the evening...

For four (makes around 25 or so ravioli)

Ingredients:  Black pasta, made with 1 cup '00' flour, 1 cup semolina, 3 medium eggs, 1 tsp olive oil, half a tsp salt, and 1 sachet of squid ink; 2 tbs diced carrot; 2 tbs diced onion; 1 garlic clove, minced; 2 tbs olive oil; half tsp chili powder; 1 small salmon fillet, skinned and diced; 3 crab sticks (approx 6-7 tbs, when diced); salt, to taste; fish broth (to serve); chopped parsley (for garnish).

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a small pan, and in it sauté the onion, carrot and garlic, until softened - about five minutes.

2. Add the chili powder, along with the diced salmon and crabmeat. Cook, stirring, for another three or four minutes, just until the salmon has lost its raw look.

3. Allow to cool, and then process briefly in the food processor. At this point, check the flavour and add salt, to taste.  (This can all be done much earlier in the day, and the stuffing then set aside until needed)

4. Roll out half of the pasta dough into sheets (reserve the other half for a different pasta dish on another night - it will be fine in the fridge for up to a week; it isn't practical to try and make only the right quantity of pasta dough for this recipe, and I always make up a full batch and then use it up over time). Using a coffee spoon, place small amounts of stuffing over one of the sheets of rolled pasta, and then carefully lay another, slightly larger sheet over the top; press the two sheets together, trying to leave as little air as possible between the sheets and around the stuffing, and then use a pasta cutter to cut the layered sheets of pasta into individual ravioli. Each pair of sheets should produce about 12 ravioli each - so, you need to repeat the entire operation twice, in order to make sufficient ravioli for four servings.

5. Heat the fish stock gently, while the water for the ravioli comes to the boil. Cook the ravioli in boiling salted water for three minutes exactly, and then use a slotted spoon to transfer each serving of ravioli to a heated soup plate; ladle about half a cup of stock into each plate, over the ravioli, and garnish with chopped parsley.  Serve.