Naked Pasta Glory

In taking on this little adventure of ours, I had decided I wanted expose my kids to foods at their source - not just telling them but actually showing them that veggies come from the ground, cheese is made from milk, and pasta doesn't always come from a box. Hence, homemade ravioli night!

First, making our own fresh cheese! The recipe is unsettling in its easiness - boil some quality milk, pour in buttermilk (which I believe has some vinegar, salts, etc.), wait for it to

curdle, then strain through (whoa) cheesecloth. To make ricotta I'm supposed to leave it undisturbed for 30 minutes. Apparently you can make different types of cheese but waiting different periods of time or squeezing out excess water. Who k

new? As proud as I was to make my own cheese, I was a bit suspect of it. I planned to use it in a ricotta filling for the ravioli but after my stomach flips after one taste of it, I decided to not subject my kids to my first cheese experiment.

Moving onto the pasta I kept calling "Sophie! Sophie!", trying to pry her from the latest game on pbs-kids online. Finally she reluctantly wondered over to the dining room. She spotted the flour "well" on the table - she eyes widened, completely engaged "What's next?!" She helped crack a hen's house full of eggs:

Then we had to slowly beat the eggs while even more slowly incorporating more and more of the flour. Basically like trying to shore up a levee you're simultaneously breaking down. Sophie was gallant in her efforts to save the egg from running all over the dining room table:

After letting the resulting dough ball rest in the fridge for a few hours, I had to muscle it into long long strips. Bittman cautioned against doing this with a rolling pin - he only provided directions for a pasta machine. Well, honey I'm not about to plunk down $95 for a pasta machine, so old-fashioned rolling pin it is. It was actually surprisingly easy - take that!

We dotted one of the thinned-out sheets with some fresh ricotta-spinach filling (with parmesean, egg, and a few spices). Then drew a checkerboard around the heaps with water from a pastry brush. After pressing the other thin sheet on top, I just had to cut each square and throw them in boiling water.

After sauteing diced canned tomatoes (sans juice), a bit of onion and a few cloves of garlic I had fresh tomato sauce to top our homemade ravioli:

Sophie ate her entire plate! A rare occasion indeed! Anneliese took a few nibbles. We agreed it tasted completely different from its frozen/pre-packaged box brethern. It tasted like eggs and flour, and that was it. It was naked in all its pasta glory.