4 Levels of Ravioli - Amateur to Food Scientist _ Epicurious

Hi , I'm Onka and I'm a level one chef .

Hi , I'm Gabrielle and I am a level two chef .

I'm Frank .

I'm a chef at the Institute of Color Education .

And I've been a chef for 24 years today .

I'm gonna make a ravioli so I am not experienced in making ravioli .

This recipe is supposed to embody the epitome of springtime like spring time and Tuscany .

I've never been to Tuscany .

Maybe someday today , I'm making a duck ravioli with a nettle pasta .

They're around for a very short amount of time in the spring .

I like their flavor .

I like uh , what they add to this pasta .

Now , I got this from the supermarket .

You don't need to roll your pasta .

You don't need to do flour and put it in an oven at 27 hours later , making your own pasta .

Just makes a world of difference .

I mean , if you don't want to make it necessarily , I so would recommend getting your pasta from the refrigerated section as opposed to , you know , boxed and dried .

It tastes totally different .

I think you're gonna get way more springy and soft and silky sort of texture when you're making pasta from scratch .

I hope you're ready .

And now we're gonna make our puree for our pasta .

So , nettles , nettles are basically just a plant that grows in the wild and they have these little spikes on them .

If you rub this against your skin , those little spikes will shoot a little bit of acid into your skin and irritate you .

So why do we eat these ?

Because delicious , right ?

They taste kind of like a tangy spinach .

So first thing we're gonna do is blast the nettles and I'm only gonna go in there for a few minutes , take it out right into our ice water .

Once the nettles are cool , we're just gonna take the leaves that were separated from the stem and put them in here .

But you can see right now I can hold these without getting stung .

Time to start making my pasta .

First thing is I'm just gonna go ahead and crack my eggs .

There's a lot of eggs .

Let's get cracking .

Sorry , I had to .

These are ready to be added into my flour and turned into dough .

We blanched the nettles , squeezed them out , got them fairly dry .

Now , what we're gonna do is blend them with our duck eggs .

How are duck eggs different than chicken eggs ?

Well , they're a little bit bigger and they're a little bit richer .

They have a little more flavor than chicken eggs because ducks eat different things than chickens .

We got our nettle and duck egg puree ready .

Let's make the pasta .

You can just go , it's a box of pasta .

You just grab it .

Normally it's on the bottom shelf and you just get it and now it's here .

So I have two types of flour .

The semolina flour is great for making pasta because of the , how much more absorbent it is .

Definitely on purpose .

Flowers should be sifted .

Then I'm gonna mix this below .

I'm using uh Italian double zero flour gives your pasta a nice silkiness , salt up your water and then take your pasta noodles and you just give them a bath by putting your Children in the bath .

Don't kick your brother .

I'm forming my Well , this is where things are tricky .

Let's be honest , I'm a level two chef .

This might not work out .

This might get messy .

So make a nice large volcano .

I'm looking at the volume of liquid that I have and I want to make enough so that this doesn't kind of pour out all over the table .

So let's hope my my little jacuzzi holds up making pasta is one of these things that is not as difficult as people think so far .

So good .

Oh boy .

Oh , so far .

Not so good .

May Day .

May Day .

Now , I'm gonna take a nice big pinch of salt .

I'm gonna whisk it together and now I'm gonna start to bring my flour in slowly until I have a dough that I can handle with my hands .

I'm slowly whisking in the egg as it's man .

Am I level one today ?

So now my lasagna noodles are boiling .

I got them from the supermarket .

They're gonna be right there .

They can just go to cook .

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start cutting in this flour , right ?

A little bit of flour in my hands .

Start bringing it together .

Starting to sweat though .

The problem with making pasta by hand , you have to be sweating a little .

If you're not sweating , you're not doing it right .

The olive oil is going in a little salt and I'm gonna need it really well because it needs , it needs it .

I'm gonna cook this for like about 10 minutes because I want the noodles to be like wobbly .

I like to need my dough a pretty good amount because I want it to get springy .

See , it's like starting to spring back really nicely .

So what happens if I press on it ?

You see it springs back .

That means I've worked the gluten and I can let this rest .

Now , we made fresh dough .

I'm gonna wrap it in some plastic wrap and just let it rest for about 20 minutes to a half hour at room temperature in the fridge for 30 to 40 minutes .

So I think that they're ready .

Are you ready for the next step ?

Yeah , I think so .

Time to make my pasta with a rolling pin .

So let's roll .

So I'm just gonna do about a third of our pasta dough .

So I like to cut it up into sections .

So , four equal parts .

Well , I flatten it out .

I'm gonna turn my machine on and I'm just gonna roll it through .

I don't wanna say using a pasta maker is cheating .

So I'm not gonna say that I'm just not gonna say that after I roll it the first time , just a dusting of flour .

I'm going to do a book fold .

And what this does is it helps even up our pasta .

It'll be a little more uniform when I roll it through the second time .

So let's roll that through .

See , it's nice and squared up .

You can kind of go ahead and shape it into that starter shape and now I have something that'll probably more easily roll into a rectangle .

Now this I can really get up there and push around when I'm working with the pasta dough .

I use the backs of my hands , not my fingers because fingers tend to poke through .

Let's go down the numbers .

See , take them out one by one .

So yeah , you wanna rinse your noodles ?

Let me tell you why because my mother did it like you have to rinse the noodles because it had , it was just soaking in all this muckety muck .

The machine lets you get to a thinner pasta , right ?

You can do this by hand with a rolling pin but the machine really does a great job of getting it super thin .

I'm sure you'll get more perfectly thin pasta that way .

But I don't know , this is pretty thin too .

And when it comes to ravioli , you want this pasta to be really thin because it's two layers of pasta though .

OK .

Now , so I took them out of the water and they're on my cutting board .

But let me tell you what happened last time .

They , it was hard for them to like stick together .

So I rinsed them last time .

So now I'm like , maybe I should just rinse one and see what happens .

And then we'll do a little comparison .

This is my nice first sheet of pasta .

Ok ?

I have my nice sheet of pasta there .

I can shut the machine off .

So now , next step for my ravioli filling , the first step is to cure the duck for my duck .

Confit .

Duck confit is a way of curing and preserving duck .

And this kind of goes back to pre refrigeration .

You cure the duck with salt .

It takes out a lot of the moisture .

It flavors the duck and then you cook it in its own fat and store it in its own fat uh at kind of cellar temperature and it wouldn't go bad because this cure gets washed off afterwards .

I'm really just gonna whack it up , stems it all and it's gonna go into my bowl first things first .

I'm going to go ahead and zest my lemon .

I love lemon zest .

I feel like lemon zest adds so much to a dish and I have my handy dandy little juicer here shallots .

I'm just gonna take the peel off .

So just do a little rough chop on this .

A little garlic .

You know , you always need a nice little aromatic .

All the salt goes in sugar .

I'm gonna take my bay leaves .

I always like to use fresh cracked black pepper .

This is how I make it better than Gabby's .

No , I have my Parmesan .

It's already upgraded .

So now I have my mozzarella and you just press down to add in my peas because I wanna kind of mash them .

You know , my nickname's peas because I have a tiny head .

What I'm gonna do with my cure is I'm gonna put a layer down on the bottom of my dish over here and then I'm gonna put a fair amount of cure on each leg , important that we use a coarse salt for this .

If you use a very fine salt , the duck legs will be extremely salty .

I'm gonna wrap this up and put it in the fridge for as long as I possibly can get a little bit of your aggression out .

You know , sometimes someone sends you a dumb email and you have to respond to it .

That guy , the guy is like , I'm not trying to throw you under the bus as he throws you under the bus .

Like just think about that guy .

His name is Tom .

I made these duck legs the other day and I cured them for about 24 hours .

What I want to do with these now is get off the excess salt .

I'm just gonna brush that off .

But I'm just gonna put them in this bowl of water and dry these off really well .

And now we're gonna cook them .

The ricotta emphasizes the sweetness and the peas and vice versa .

Add in Berio Romana .

And that's gonna bring up the saltiness factor , my salt , some pepper , we're gonna cook the duck .

Now I'm using rendered duck fat lard works for this as well .

So all I'm gonna do is take my fat we to be melted and warm and let's put our duck legs in the fat .

I'm gonna put these in a preheated oven at about 250 degrees for about 2 to 3 hours .

Ok ?

So I'm gonna go ahead and put some of my lemon juice in and then I want to incorporate this really well because these are all going to be going into individual raviolis .

The duck comfy has cooked for about 2.5 hours .

Now I'm gonna pull the meat off the bones .

All of my duck legs are picked and all I'm gonna do is give this a nice rough chop and now we can finish the filling .

The mozzarella is gonna melt down like gooey and the Parmesan , what it's gonna do it , it's just gonna like make everything stick together .

It's kind of like a cheese marriage .

Now we get to assemble our filling .

I have a nice chunk of Parmesan Reggiano .

We want to take some of this time and just pick some leaves in there .

Duck goes in one duck egg and mascarpone cheese .

Once the mascarpone melts and the Parmesan cheese melts , we're gonna have a nice kind of creamy filling .

So now that our cheese is ready , I'm gonna start cutting out sheets them down the middle .

A very light coating of egg wash and this is just basically glue .

Just kind of a more guarantee that things are gonna stick nicely because we want to take our cheese got mozzarella first and you want to put them to one end of the sheet and just kind of eyeball a tablespoon of filling for each ravioli .

A nice mound of filling in the middle .

And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to make a little cradle and then I'm gonna take a duck egg yolk and put an egg yolk in a whole egg yolk inside a ravioli .

Just a , just a egg and just you just bite into .

Now it's time to go ahead and lay my second sheet down over top and I'm gonna lay it over , give it a little stretch .

I'm gonna go around try and get all of the air out otherwise though , I don't really have much of a method .

So now we're testing to see if they're sticking together or not .

And so the clean girls are , what are you guys doing ?

Are you not so much this ?

They're hugging and kissing .

Look at this .

Ok .

So don't wrench .

Once you boil your pasta , it'll get a little bit more rigid and then you don't have to be quite so delicate with it .

It's , it's not like a little baby bird anymore .

One thing that you wanna make sure of when you do these ravioli is that you get a good seal .

I put the egg wash on and then I press down nice and tight .

So now what I'm doing is I'm making sure that they're sticking together .

So , you know , you put a little arm muscle in there and you make sure that they stay together .

The stamp is to kind of give yourself a nice edge .

This one looks and feels really good .

I'm gonna go ahead and just stamp that .

Here's my first , you know , little ravioli and I'm gonna cut the ravioli with that .

OK ?

I think that ravioli in any shape or form are delicious .

So a ravioli should be square .

I think that's just what the Italian said .

I do like circles better just for the fact that it's a little less dough .

So what I do now is I'm gonna up the edges a little dust , my tray .

Really ?

Well , just so they don't stick .

But that's basically what I'm gonna cook for one person .

So now that I've sealed them to perfection , I'm going to transfer them over to my parchment paper .

Now we're gonna make the sauce .

All we have to do for this right now is melt the butter .

Once it's melted , we'll get the ravioli in the water and we'll finish the sauce .

I have some gently boiling water .

I'm going to salt it a nice generous amount of salt .

So I don't want this to be at a full rolling ball when I add the pasta because they're fairly delicate .

And if it's boiling away like crazy , it's gonna beat my ravioli up .

So I'm just gonna get these , lay them in nice and gently .

So my pasta's going in and when they float , they're done , I'm gonna give them about 3 to 4 minutes and then we're gonna put them in with our sauce .

So this is only taking like real time about 10 seconds .

All right .

We have a floater .

Looks great .

I think we're ready for the sauce .

You guys feel saucy ?

OK .

So am I I'm like my oil to heat up slowly .

I'm gonna chop my garlic and garlic is essential for any kind of pasta .

Just chop it up nice .

So , the first thing I'm gonna do is make a roux .

It's basically equal parts butter and flour .

The thing about a roux is this is gonna thicken my sauce .

I'm going to take my butter .

Ok ?

I'm gonna be sure that I get them the yolk side up because I don't really want the yolk to burst at all .

So now that my garlic is chopped , I'm going to put that into the pan .

Ok ?

And so now I'm going to whisk in my pasta waters .

So this is salted water , essentially some black pepper .

So now I'm gonna chop up a little bit of the basil , right ?

That smells so good .

At this point .

I'm going to add in my peas as well as my lemon zest .

Now I'm gonna go ahead and add in my lemon juice .

Pinch of salt .

I need some sugar and then you just start dropping your tomatoes .

You need the sugar to take some of the acidity out of the tomato .

It just makes it taste like a sauce to the left .

Take it back .

Now y'all one hop because now it's time to add in my ravioli .

So I'm just kind of plopping them in there .

You just want the cheese to melt of size .

I'm gonna finish with some Parmesan in my sauce and with the Amaan is gonna do , it's gonna help thicken my sauce .

It's gonna melt a little , they look very rustic , very homemade , but that's what I wanted .

That was the goal .

I do have a little bit of olive oil that I am going to use just to kind of brighten that flavor a little bit .

Oh , I think I'm ready off , off , off , off , off .

All you gotta do is plate this up and give it a taste .

So I'm gonna plate the ravioli .

I always put one in the middle .

I think five is the perfect amount because it just sits so nicely on the plate .

It's like flour petals .

That's what it looks like .

You don't need too much sauce .

Right .

The main star is the ravioli .

I'm thinking we'll do five .

So we'll see who makes the cut on America's next top ravioli .

I'm only gonna serve one ravioli per person .

Just a little bit of that buttery goodness .

Just a little bit of black pepper .

I'm gonna take some of this fresh basil just a little bit and some Parmesan cheese .

It's a nice sprinkling , snowing .

It's snowing .

It's snowing on my room and then top it off with some nice fresh minced parsley duck ravioli .

And this is my ravioli .

This is my ravioli and that's my duck ravioli .

Mhm .

Wow .

This is good that duck milk is so rich ravioli is a wonderful filled pasta with so many options for everything from filling to sauce .

Let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs .

Onica used store bought pasta .

You don't have to need it or roll it and it's consistent texture and thickness adds to the convenience .

You can also store it at home for a long time .

These noodles just fine fresh pasta like the pasta made by gabby and Frank is made with eggs and flour mixed together with minimal or no water added .

Sometimes there is a blood spot in the egg and that's just very natural .

Sometimes it actually means that the egg is fresher .

Actually , a blood spot usually means the hen has a ruptured blood vessel while she was making or laying the egg .

It's ok to eat or remove but definitely a little yucky .

It's no indication of freshness .

Today , I learned something , sealing your ravioli is important .

After boiling .

There's some residual starch on the pasta .

This starch from the pasta layers will a here and gelatin when heated and seal the edges .

Well , if they're pressed together , firmly onica figured this out on her own by experimenting with rinsed and un rinsed noodles .

It's not sticking at all .

The un rinsed pasta had more residual starch to stick together and gelatin .

I when onka ravioli were cooked also .

Although you couldn't really see it , the residual starch makes the pasta less smooth and allows the starches to connect and interact easier .

Great work oni I love having another food scientist on this show .

I'm an expert .

Now , I'm a ravioli lasagna noodle connoisseur , expert lady .

They're still at the bottom of this , of this water and you want them to rise a little bit and they're not rising .

People will say , OK , they're floating , they're ready .

These are not cooked yet .

Rose .

I have no idea why people think the ravioli is cooked when it floats .

Maybe you do floating doesn't indicate doneness when things sink in a fluid , it's normally because the density of the object is higher than the density of the fluid .

When things float , the density is lower than the density of the fluid .

So the ravioli only need a little push to rise to the top of the boiling water .

The push comes from convective currents in the water .

But whatever the cause is , this floating doesn't relate to whether your ravioli is thoroughly cooked .

I guess I could google it , but that would be bored .

Each chef's recipe included a fabulous combination of delicious ingredients .

But as usual , Frank elevated his ravioli and decided to work with nettles .

Nettles have an earthy , slightly tart flavor and are loaded with chlorophyll .

A , a fat soluble pigment which will add a deep green colored pasta and retains the green color when boiled in water .

A lot of questions come up when you're making ravioli .

Not all of them have easy answers .

I don't know what the plural of this is .

I think it might be ravioli because it's a single ravioli with an Italian name like proto .

I'll defer to Frank and concur that .

A single ravioli is a ravioli ravioli or ravioli .

I hope you'll take some of these tips and ideas from our three extraordinary chefs to make the most delicious filled pasta