No Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Here!

Hello! Spied this a few weeks ago at the local Salvation Army thrift store:

It was $2.99,and although I loved the graphics on the box, I was pleased to see that this set was complete; ravioli tin, small wooden rolling pin and recipe sheet were inside. Yes, I thought myself up to the challenge of making ravioli, and did just that last week.

I used the ravioli dough recipe included on the recipe sheet; it was easy to work with. For filling, I used a spinach-ricotta recipe I found on the Internet (the recipe sheet had recipes for a spinach-less ricotta cheese filling and a meat filling). 

Of course, it took awhile to roll out each sheet of pasta dough, a task complicated a bit by the recipe giving no mention of how much dough to use to make each sheet. But I quickly figured it out and then was able to weigh out the same amount of dough on my kitchen scale each time I was ready to make another round of ravioli. 

Here's my batch of ravioli, ready to be cooked:

If you're thinking the recipe made a lot of ravioli, you would be right - although the dough recipe gave 72 ravioli as the yield, I got 84. 

Close up:

Don't they look nice? The darker color of the ravioli dough is due to the white wheat flour that I used. That's one reason why I bought the ravioli set; I try to avoid pastas made with white flour when I can.

These cooked up nicely, too - only needed about eight minutes, and only one or two ravioli fell apart while cooking. That's a testament to how well the ravioli tin was designed - by going over the filled pasta sheets with the rolling pin, they were cut and sealed at the same time. 

Even though the tin and rolling pin worked in tandem, this wasn't exactly a quick dinner to prepare. However, the recipe ended up making enough ravioli for two meals, plus an additional 12 ounces of noodles were made from leftover dough. Three meals from one cooking session isn't too bad! And the cooked ravioli, served with tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese, were delicious. 

Note: I don't know how old this set is. My set's recipe sheet listed the address of the Ohio importer of this Italian-made set, and the address included a five-digit zip code. This dates the set as no older than 1963, even if the box design makes it look even older. Nevertheless, a fun find that resulted in something fun to make and eat!