Homemade Portobello Mushroom Ravioli Adventure

Homesickness is new for me. The South Bay is beautiful. Flowers are blooming, birds are singing, fresh produce and delicious food abound, and many people wave back at me. But I miss Colorado.

Some wistfulness is normal: Friends, places, the comfort that comes from being in an area for so long. Not getting to watch Louisville rebuild from the fire. Other small things took me by surprise, like discovering that a super-effective generic laundry stain remover doesn’t exist here — and can’t be shipped.

Local eateries have produced more delights than duds. But the fresh ravioli we picked up at an upscale grocery couldn’t hold a candle to the ones from our favorite Denver-based pasta company. That’s it. Time to stop moping and start making.

Homemade ravioli have a special place in my heart. Waaaay back in high school, my prom date’s father made us fresh lobster ravioli for a fancy al fresco dinner on their porch in Vermont. That still sticks in my mind as an incredible meal.

I’ve done homemade pasta before, in Colorado. My issue with homemade ravioli is that recipes commonly call for ricotta-based fillings, which often produces a grainy texture that I don’t enjoy. Seasoning matters, too. Fresh store-bought Gruyère and caramelized onion ravioli we tried recently was remarkably bland. Putting olive oil and flaky salt on top produced the only flavor.

Mushroom ravioli lend themselves more to Parmesan than ricotta, so that’s the direction I took. Serious Eats had a promising recipe for mushroom filling to go in tortellini, but we’ve cooked Deb Perelman’s savory Dutch baby topping from “Smitten Kitchen Every Day” so many times that this seemed like a better starting point.

I made some tweaks, namely using portobello mushrooms instead of smaller creminis, mostly because they’re the same price per pound at the local greengrocer. And the mushrooms needed more white vermouth to scrape up the fond. Since ravioli filling is the star, I folded in finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and seasoned it with more salt and pepper to taste.

Before embarking on ravioli production, I imagined an H-shaped ravioli cutter would be ideal, not realizing that the spacing and filling amounts had to be absolutely perfect for the tool to work. I resorted to awkward cuts with the outside edge. Also, a neat dough rectangle has never come out of the roller, so I did a lot of freestyling. The ravioli looked wonky, but tasted delicious.

If mushrooms aren’t your thing, you could go the butternut squash route. I tried this recipe, but with fewer garlic cloves inside butternut squash halves, just a sprinkle of dried sage, and feta crumbles instead of Parmesan — so successful that I’d make it again. We had an epic amount leftover, but fortunately it worked well as a side dish.

Maybe that’s the antidote to homesickness: Filling up on good stuff.

Handmade Mushroom Ravioli
Adapted from Serious Eats and Smitten Kitchen

Dough:
1 lb. dough from Homemade Pasta Adventure

Filling:
225g (8 oz.) portobello mushroom caps
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 shallot
2 Tbsp. white vermouth or white wine
3 Tbsp. (35g) heavy cream
10g Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Salt and pepper

To Finish:
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Unsalted butter
Flaky salt

Equipment: 12-inch metal skillet, stand mixer, pasta roller, pastry brush, small food processor, fine grater or microplane, ravioli cutter (optional).

Mushroom Filling: Clean the mushroom caps, remove any remaining stems, and then finely chop them (you’ll put them in a food processor later). Mince the shallot. Measure out the wine and heavy cream. Melt the unsalted butter in a 12-inch metal skillet over medium heat. Add the minced shallot and cook it for around 1 to 2 minutes or until softened.

Now add the mushrooms along with a sprinkle of salt and some ground black pepper. Raise the heat to medium-high. Using a wooden spoon, cook for around 5 minutes, stirring often. Once the liquids cook off, the mushrooms should brown slightly.

Add the white wine or vermouth and lower the heat to medium-low. Use the spoon to scrape up the fond, cooking the wine off, about 1 to 2 minutes. Now add the cream, which should start simmering immediately, and then scrape the mushrooms into a bowl. Set the bowl aside to cool.

Dough: Prepare the pasta dough according to the directions and refrigerate.

Finish the Filling: Put the mushroom mixture in a small food processor and blend until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. Put the smooth mixture back into the bowl.

Finely grate 10 grams of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Add the cheese to the smooth mushroom mixture and stir to combine evenly. Season the mixture well with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Set aside.

Remove the pasta dough from the fridge. With lightly floured hands, knead the dough for about 30 seconds then cut it into four pieces. (You’ll only use three-quarters for this ravioli recipe; you can roll, cut, and freeze the rest if you’d like. Or add a different filling.)

Take one quarter to start and cover the rest with plastic wrap or a towel so they don’t dry out.

Attach the flat pasta roller to the stand mixer. Set the roller to 1, the widest setting. Take a dough piece and flatten it with your hands. Put on Speed 2 and feed the dough into the roller. Send it through a second time, sprinkling with a little flour first if it seems sticky.

Increase the settings one notch at a time, running the dough through twice at each setting, until it’s slightly thinner than 1/16th of an inch, usually at setting 6. Avoid making the dough too thin.

Lay the rolled dough pieces onto a lightly floured cutting board. Cover each section with plastic wrap to prevent drying. Repeat the rolling process with each dough quarter.

Assemble the Ravioli: Set out a pastry brush and small bowl of cool water. Take one dough sheet, fold it horizontally along the middle to make a light crease, and then open it again fully. Place 1 tablespoon of filling spaced a couple inches apart along the lower horizontal half of the dough. Using the pastry brush and tiny bit of water, lightly moisten the dough around the filling.

Fold the top half over the filling half along the crease. Gently press from the folded side to the open-ended side to get the air out. Go around one lump at a time, pressing to form a seal. This is quite fiddly. It’s okay if a little air gets trapped inside.

Use a ravioli cutter, stamp, or a paring knife to cut the ravioli into squares. Try not to cut too closely to the filling.

Repeat this process for the rest of the filling and dough. This recipe produces around 14 ravioli.

Cook: Put a large pot of salted water at a low boil. Cook the ravioli for 3 minutes, gently stirring periodically to separate any that want to stick together, and then remove them with a slotted spoon.

Finish: Melt a couple tablespoons of unsalted butter in a large skillet and put the cooked ravioli in to gently coat them. Serve ravioli warm with a sprinkle of flaky salt and more finely grated cheese.

Freezing: Set a zip-top freezer bag on a non-metal cutting board. Place ravioli flat and spaced apart on a piece of wax paper. Carefully slide the wax paper into the freezer bag. Put cutting board in the freezer until the ravioli are completely frozen, a few hours or overnight. To cook them, boil them in a large pot of salted water for 8 minutes, gently stirring periodically to separate any that want to stick together. Remove them with a slotted spoon to finish and serve.