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.