Gluten-free Ravioli

Today, we ventured into making gluten-free ravioli! Why? Well, because our friend won a pasta maker in a raffle, (Thank you Jessica Kidd) and gave it to us. Also special thanks to Nina Spitzer, President of   the Greater Phoenix Celiac Chapter, for the recipe! It is so delicious we decided to do a blog on it.

We made a Mushroom-Lemon-Caper Ravioli, and a Dairy Free Sweet Potato-Sage-Pecan Ravioli. Don't be overwhelmed with the long ingredient list; the pasta is very simple and easy to make. You can change the fillings and put in your own ingredients, but we thought we would give you the recipe for the kinds we made. This pasta recipe will make any kind of pasta, from wide flat noodles for soups to thin vermicelli. 

You will need: 

A pasta roller or rolling pin

A ravioli shell mold or mold your own

3 eggs

Corn starch

Potato starch

Rice flour

Xanthan gum

Olive oil

Salt

Water 

For the filling, you will need:

Mushrooms (your favorite kind)

Ricotta 

An extra egg

Pesto 

Mozzarella 

Parmesan 

[and/or]

1 large sweet potato

Pecans

Coconut oil

Brown sugar
Cinnamon

For the sauces you will need:

Fresh sage

Butter

Brown sugar

Jewel's gluten-free all purpose flour

[and/or]

Butter

Lemon

Jewel's gluten-free all purpose flour

Chicken or Veggie Stock

Capers

And here is where we start showing you pictures! 

First things first, pull out three eggs. Let them get to room temp, or just put them under some warm water. Next mix together all the dry ingredients. 

7/8 cup or 125g corn starch 

3/4 cup potato starch

3/8 cup or 50g rice flour

3 teaspoons xanthan gum

1/2 teaspoon salt 

Mix 'em all up good, and then we're on to the next step: mixing the wet ingredients. 

This is where those three eggs go.

3 eggs

1&1/2 teaspoons olive oil

6 tablespoons of water

Whisk wet ingredients all together. Now go back to your bowl of dry ingredients and make a little hole in the middle to pour all of the wet ingredients into. 

Once you pour the wet into the dry, use a fork to mix all the ingredients together. Once thoroughly mixed, put some of the corn starch on your hands and knead it until all the ingredients look well mixed. Be careful as to not over knead it–– it might start to get tough. When it appears well mixed, form it in to a loaf (similar to a small loaf of bread).

Here is the hard part, this dough will be tempting your taste buds because it so looks and smells divine, but  you will have to be patient and refrigerate it over night. Place the dough in a Ziploc bag and in to refrigerator so let it set overnight, and it will be waiting for you in the morning for part two! 

After the dough has set overnight, it is time to pull it out of the fridge so that you can get started on part two! It won't be much longer before you will get to savor the rewards of all your hard work. 

Remove the dough from the Ziploc and cover it in corn starch so it doesn't stick to anything. Then cut the loaf into 6 slices. Like so..

It looks a little like a good brie. Take one slice and place the rest back into the bag so they don't dry out.  On a corn-starch-coated board, roll the slice out to a 1/2 inch thickness in a form of a rectangle, making the edges as long as the pasta rollers. Set the pasta machine dial to 1, and pass the dough through.

Repeat last step with dials #2, #3, #4, and #5. Make sure to keep it lightly floured with corn starch with each pass. You want the rolled dough to be long enough to cover the ravioli mold with a little extra peeking out. 

 Cover the mold with corn starch so that when you pop them out––they actually pop out. Place the first layer down onto the ravioli mold. Make sure to give it some slack and press down into the holes.
Like this:

*Side Note - If you don't have the pasta roller or the ravioli mold, you can use a rolling pin, rolling it as thin as you can. Place one sheet on a flat surface and scoop at least a tablespoon of filling about 1/2 inch apart (feel free to add more filling). Lightly brush with water around the fillings and place another thin sheet on top. Slice with a knife into squares.

Now it is time to place for your delicious fillings! So I will show you the two fillings we used. First we made a mushroom ricotta. Take any kind of mushroom and put them in a food processor until they look like the photo below (or you can use a knife to dice them). You will need about 1 1/2 cups. 

Sauté mushrooms in a little bit of olive oil until soft. Then add:

1/2 cup ricotta

 2 tablespoons pesto

3 tablespoons Parmesan

salt & pepper to taste

a small egg 

Thoroughly mix together and you have your first filling!

 For the sweet potato ravioli, take a large sweet potato and cut into 1 inch slices. Place the sweet potato in a microwave safe bowl, add 2 tablespoons of water, cover with plastic wrap and microwave for about 6 minutes (until soft). Add a handful of finely chopped pecans (make sure they are finally chopped so that they don't poke through, damaging the ravioli).
Like this:

After adding the nuts into the sweet potato, add 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 tablespoon coconut oil. Mash them all together and your next filling is ready. 

Back to the first layer of pasta you just put into the mold. Start to spoon the fillings in and fill to just below the top. Look at the picture for an example. 

Now you are going to roll out another sheet. Repeat the whole process: take out a slice, roll it 1/2 inch thick, dial #1 twice, and then #2, #3, #4, & #5. Place that sheet on top and with a rolling pin, start to press off the extra dough. Make as many sheets as you want; just make sure to flour the mold with corn starch before you put down the dough. 

Once it's all pressed, flip the mold over and they will all fall out. On medium heat, bring a medium saucepan filled half way with water to a boil and boil them for about 3-4 minutes. 

If you would like to use our sauces for the ones we made, here are those recipes: 

Mushroom Ricotta:

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in sauce pan. Add 1/8 teaspoon Jewel's all purpose flour and whisk into butter. Add 1/2 cup chicken or veggie stock and 1/2 of a lemon of lemon juice. Then add capers to taste.

Sweet Potato Sage, Dairy free version too:

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter or coconut oil for DF with 1 tablespoon brown sugar in a sauce pan. Add 1/4 teaspoon Jewel's all purpose flour, 5 tablespoons of water and whisk until mixed. Add about 3-4 leaves of fresh chopped sage. 

Now it is time to plate and enjoy the benefits of all your hard work!  Enjoy!

If you and your family are anything like mine, they will be begging for these on a regular basis. Luckily, these raviolis freeze well. When I make these, I always make extra so that I can freeze the extras RAW for later. This makes my life so much easier when the kids get home from school. I just pull them out frozen and boil for 4-6 minutes. 

Cooking Class!

Saturday afternoon we had our third cooking class. It was so much of fun. Using our unique gluten-free flour blend, we are always trying out new recipes––for everything.  So when we find a really good one, we like to share them with people who need to cook gluten-free for themselves or their loved ones. 

Today on the menu: "Wheat-less" thins, sopapillas, and mini corn dogs! Everything we make is gluten-free, but we also made everything dairy-free for this class because of the dietary restrictions of some of our guests. 

First we made the sopapillas, because they have to sit for 20 minutes. 

Gluten-free Sopapillas

Ingredients:

4-cups Jewel's All Purpose Flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons shortening
1 1/2 cups warm water
Oil for frying  

In a large bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt and shortening. Stir in water; mix until dough is smooth. Cover and let stand for 20 minutes. Roll out on floured board until 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into 3 inch squares. Heat 1 inch oil in fry pan to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Fry until golden brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.

I made some chipotle sour cream, guacamole, and we topped it with refried beans and cheddar cheese.

Chipotle Sour Cream

Ingredients

1-cup sour cream

1/2 teaspoon chipotle (liquified or powder)

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/8 teaspoon mustard powder

1/8 teaspoon new mexican chili powder 

1-teaspoon butter flavored olive oil

Squeeze of lime if wanted 

Stir all together at once, use right away or chill. I used three teaspoons of this in my guacamole to add some flavor and cream. Add salt and pepper after chipotle sour cream to avocados (3) and voila! 

Next we made the "wheat-less" thins and flavored them with garlic & dill. 

Jewel’s Homemade Wheat-less Thins

Ingredients

Plain

1 ¼ cup Jewel’s all purpose flour

5 teaspoons sugar

½ teaspoon sea salt

¼ teaspoon paprika

½ stick butter chilled

¼ cup water

½ teaspoon vanilla

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and paprika. Add chopped pieces of chilled butter. Blend until butter blends with flour mixture. Add water and vanilla, mix well. Dough should begin forming into a ball. If necessary, add more water. Divide mixture in half and form into balls. On a lightly floured surface or parchment paper, roll out the dough as thinly as possible, about 1/16^th of an inch. Sprinkle with sea salt or other add-ins as listed below. Cut into one-inch squares and place on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking oil. Bake for 7-8 minutes or until brown and crisp. 

They came out crispy and full of flavor! We topped them with goat cheese and cherry jam, smoked salmon and cream cheese, and a cheese garlic herb spread. 

To finish, we created a mini flaxseed corn dog. These things are addicting––well, everything we made was––but you just pop them in your mouth and before you know it you've eaten five. 

Mini Gluten-free Corn Dogs

Ingredients

2 tablespoons ground flax seeds

6 tablespoons water

1-cup Jewel’s All Purpose Flour

4 hotdogs, veggie dogs, or turkey dogs

1-cup cornmeal

¼ cup sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

¾ tablespoon salt

1-cup soymilk, rice milk, or almond milk

¼ cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray mini cupcake pan with non-stick oil, we use Vegalene. Bring water to boil in saucepan and add the ground flax seed. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for three minutes or until thick. Stir occasionally, and set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add ground flax seed mixture, milk, and canola oil to flour, and beat until smooth. Fill mini cupcake pan ½ full with cornbread. Chop hotdogs into 1-inch pieces, and place in cornbread, making sure to cover the entire hotdog with it. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes, serve or freeze and save for later.

I hope everyone enjoyed eating all the food! And we can't wait to have the next cooking class to show everyone all the new recipes we came up with. Thanks for reading!