Got basil? I have a ton of it! This year I planted new basil because I'd given up on last's years coming back. Of course, within 2 weeks of planting new basil plants, I noticed the seedlings popping up from lasts year's plants. This meant I had even more basil! Which is kind of an awesome thing really. I have plenty to cook with, dry, and share with friends who randomly want to make pizza with some fresh basil. Our local groceries tend to not meet the basil demand so it can be surprisingly hard to get when you want it sometimes...alright often. Hydroponic basil doesn't count as a good solution.
Anyway, as I flipped through USL looking for a recipe for which I already had most ingredients and that Mel and Bender would eat, My eye fell on 'ravioli in basil cream sauce'. A 30 minute recipe (after cooking from this book, I didn't trust it to just take 30 minutes) was appealing to me. My experience with the book has also taught me that the portions are unrealistically large. When it said 4 servings, I converted it to at least 6 . Mike and Rebecca recently got back from Europe followed by the Appalachian Trail so I invited them to join me. This way I'd have a reasonable amount of leftovers but not more than I could handle. Plus, cooking with a friend always makes it more enjoyable. Our groceries stock fresh ravioli (look near dairy) in a variety of flavors. Rebecca and I actually had an adventure with the ravioli. It apparently didn't get placed in the buggy after it was bagged by the grocer. I thought that it might've gone home with Rebecca but she left the next morning (after shopping) for the Appalachian Trail. By the time I realized, she was well out of phone range. Graciously, a week later, I realized the problem and the grocery kindly let me pick up fresh ravioli. Whew! Some real craziness went into the making and procuring for this recipe. I chose to prepare the dish with 4 cheese ravioli and ravioli filled with spinach and ricotta. They had some lobster ravioli that I found intriguing but spinach won via eeni-meeni-mieni-mo. You know how it is. Has anyone out there tried lobster? I'm still curious.
Ravioli in Basil Cream Sauce
Preparation:
2 packages (~10-12 oz ) ravioli, heavy cream, 1 can of tomatoes with green chilis (I used mild Rotel because Rebecca was very enthusiastic about it) , a few cloves of garlic, 2-4 green onions, parmesan cheese, and oh yeah...basil.
Cook the ravioli for about 5-7 minutes in boiling water, drain and set aside. Warm the cream with tomatoes with green chilis. Toss in garlic, onions and basil and bring to a boil. Add parmesan. Stir quickly to get it to melt. Ladle sauce over ravioli and enjoy.
Rating: We all enjoyed this very much. We were disappointed that the parmesan wanted to clump rather than melt into the sauce to thicken it. We decided in the future parmesan on top would work better. Also we prefer a thicker sauce. Therefore, I recommend adding a little cornstarch dissolved in cold water until thickened to your preference. I also am a heavy on the sauce sort. If all that are eating are, you may want more sauce...double perhaps. The flavor for this dish was excellent though. The clumps of parmesan goodness were pretty exciting when we hit them too. Overall, I'd repeat it and thicken the sauce. Oh, independent of the recipe, I'd choose 4 cheese ravioli again but not the spinach ricotta. The spinach had too much spinach and I thought would've been better with some garlic in there....but you know how I feel about garlic. :)
I agree that it needed a tad more sauce! About the parm, following Lisa's instructions @ Homesick Texan, it's best to add the cheese a handful at a time and stir until completely melted before adding the next batch. It's instructions like that one that set the blogs apart from the cookbooks.
ReplyDeleteWould you try a meat ravioli? Did the sauce itself have enough garlic?