On Saturday, we invited some friends over for our first ever (maybe the first ever?) ravioli party. The new pasta machine was the inspiration, and the idea was simple. We’d provide the machine, the pasta dough, and more red wine than you can shake a stick at, and anyone who came would bring something they’ve dreamed about having stuffed inside ravioli.

We had no idea if people would take to the idea. We had no experience even making ravioli, having used the machine only once before. Amazingly as people showed up, they went right to the kitchen, chopping, sauteeing, preparing their respective fillings. How great, I thought, I can just sit back and sip wine all night. Ha!

Actually I had a lot of fun. Once the fillings were ready and our core group had showed up, I began the ravioli production process (with lots of assistance). We’d knead and then flatten the dough through the pasta machine into sheets about 24 inches long and 4 wide. We’d cut that into two separate foot long sheets, placing the filling on half of the sheet in little teaspoon sized balls, and then folding the sheet lengthwise to seal and cut into individual raviolis. Each foot long sheet made about 5-6 raviolis, so we’d do about 4 sheets of each filling to make sure everyone got at least 2. After a quick boil, I’d sauce them with either homemade marinara or pesto. And repeat.

By the end of the night we’d made 6 courses of ravioli, with 4 batches of dough (16 eggs!), including a final improvised dessert course. Here was the menu:

1. Duck and portobello mushroom with plum sauce
2. Shrimp, pine nuts, and mushroom with marinara
3. White asparagus, caramelized onions, and truffled goat cheese with creamy pesto
4. Zucchini, prosciutto, dry ricotta, and basil with marinara
5. Sun-dried tomato pesto and aged cheese with marinara and pesto
6. Raspberry and mascarpone with chocolate praliné sauce

What can I say? It would have been spaghetti with marinara sauce without everyone’s creative fillings. Thank you all. Here are some pictures that I (and others) managed to take in between batches:

Danny testing out our onion goggles

Stephanie and Justin at the ravioli prep table (a little image stabilization would have helped here)

Feeding pasta dough into the machine (for kneading)

Pasta dough coming out of the machine

Justin making raviolis

Preparing our dessert course of raspberry mascarpone raviolis

Ravioli porn closeup

Raviolis anxiously awaiting their fate

Cooked raviolis excitedly awaiting their sauce

• Raclette the event!
• The making of a mushroom lasagna
• The hand crank pasta machine
• Throwin’ shoes after the Derby
• Not your 5th grade pizza party

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