the things you can do

Make your own stuffed pasta, and unless you've got a family of eight to feed, you're probably going to have quite a bit left over. The fillings tend to go a long way, and once you've committed yourself to making pasta dough, there's no point in making a half or a quarter batch. You might as well go the whole way. If you're making linguine or spaghetti or some other unstuffed pasta, you can let the extra noodles dry for later use. If you're making stuffed pasta, make as many as your filling or your pasta dough will allow, place the extras in ziploc plastic bags, and freeze them for later.

We thought the radicchio-stuffed beauties that we made back in March were long gone, but early last week Michelle's freezer foraging turned up one last ziploc bag full tucked away in the back. As it happened, we had some sugar snap peas in the fridge that we hadn't yet decided what to do with. Then those proverbial lightbulbs turned on. We blanched the peas until they were just tender and set them aside. Meanwhile, we cooked our pasta in boiling salted water until it was just al dente and set them aside. We sautéed some minced garlic in a splash of olive oil for a minute, added a pinch of ground saffron, and stirred again. We added the ravioli and sautéed them gently in the olive oil/garlic mixture, being careful to flip them over as gingerly as possible so that they didn't bust open on us. When they'd cooked a little longer and gotten nicely coated with the saffron-garlic oil, we added the sugar snap peas, salted the combination to taste and ground some black pepper over top, stirring everything gently for another 30 seconds or so. Lastly, we grated some Parmesan on top and divided the ravioli and peas into shallow bowls. In minutes flat we had a couple of lovely little pasta dishes sitting before us. Problem is, it was so damn good that everything disappeared just as quickly. I barely managed to take the photo above before Michelle polished off her plate. My plate was already empty.

Making your own pasta might seem like a lot of work, but it sure does pay dividends.

aj