Dinosaur ravioli

 

If you have dinosaur loving kids or are a dinosaur loving adult, this recipe might just be the right one for you. I made vegetarian t-rex spinach ravioli with a sunblushed tomato, garlic, basil, pine nut and mozzarella filling and wanted to share the recipe with you. The dinosaurs were quite thin so the sealing was a bit challenging, but I didn’t split any of them when cooking. You can of course make any shape of ravioli that you fancy with this recipe. The recipe actually yields quite a lot of pasta dough so you might want to make other shapes also that are quicker to make.

And note that my pasta dough is eggless, hence vegan, but I used Mozzarella in the filling. If you want to keep it vegan, you can find some alternatives to that. Have fun pasta making!

Pasta dough

100 g fresh spinach

1 ½ cups 00 pasta flour

1 cup semolina

1 tsp salt

½ cup water (add more if needed)

1 tsp oil

Filling

2 garlic cloves

70 g sunblushed tomatoes

2 tbsp pine nuts

50 g grated mozzarella

A few fresh basil leaves

Pinch of salt and ground black pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

Method

Wilt the spinach in the ½ cup water for the dough and purée it smooth. Mix it and the other ingredients for the pasta dough and knead to a firm ball. Wrap the dough in a cling film or beeswax wrap and let rest in the fridge for at least one hour.

Fry the garlic in olive oil and toast the pine nuts in a pan. Purée them with the other filling ingredients into a smooth paste.

Roll the dough out and work it through a pasta machine into thin sheets. Cut out dinosaur shapes with a cookie cutter and fill them with the filling. Seal carefully by brushing the edges with water and pressing them together.

Boil the ravioli in hot water for a few minutes and serve. I added just a little bit of brown butter on the ravioli for serving.

 

Your VegHog

Homemade smoked burrata, porcini and wild garlic ravioli

 

It’s a public holiday, Ascension Day, in Denmark today so I’m starting the day slowly writing a blog post and making breakfast. We will go to the local covered market again, probably eat lunch there and then stroll back home. We won’t leave quite yet, as a thunderstorm is approaching from Sweden and it already started raining here. I hope it clears for the afternoon.

I have been manufacturing some homemade pasta again. This time I made large ravioli with a smoked burrata, porcini mushroom and wild garlic filling. The ravioli were very tasty. I served them with brown butter and a radish salad. You can see some stages of the making here.

Your VegHog

 

Hedgehog porcini ravioli & Hedgehog Awareness Week

Hedgehog Awareness Week has started once again, and it would be great if each and every one of us could do at least one small thing during the week to raise hedgehog awareness or directly help hedgehogs. If you have a garden, leave a shallow bowl of water out and make sure that there's a gap in your fence so that hedgehogs can access your garden. Read for more hints and tips how to help the spiny creatures on the webpage of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. 

I've had a tradition now for a few years to make hedgehog shaped ravioli for the hedgehog week, and this year was no different. This time I made brown pasta dyed with dried porcini mushrooms with earthy porcini filling. I thought I'd keep everything else simple and let the mushroom flavour be the star of the dish. This worked out very nicely and all hogs held together during the boiling!

Have a look at my recipe:

Ingredients

Pasta:

200 g pasta flour

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

15 g dried porcini mushrooms

Filling:

15 g dried porcini mushrooms

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

30 g grated vegetarian pasta cheese

3 tbsp breadcrumbs

Sprinkle of salt

Sprinkle of ground black pepper

Handful of fresh basil leaves

Served with:

Basil and garlic infused olive oil

Lambs lettuce

Method

Soak all dried porcini mushrooms (15 g + 15 g) in water for about 30 minutes. Drain them, but save the porcini water and purée the mushrooms into a smooth paste. Take the half to use in the pasta dough.

Knead the dough ingredients together and let the dough rest in the fridge for one hour. Add some of the porcini water to the dough, if needed. You can also add it to moisten and flavour the filling later.

Chop the onion and garlic for the filling finely and fry them in little olive oil until soft. Mix all ingredients for the filling together.

Then roll the pasta out. Make thin sheets with a pasta machine, cut the ravioli into shapes and fill them.

Cook in salt water for a few minutes and serve.

I would like to share this pasta recipe with Pasta Please vegetarian pasta cooking challenge, which is hosted this month by Chris from Thinly Spread and co-hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes.

Have a wonderful Hedgehog Awareness Week!

Your VegHog

Hedgehog shaped ravioli with a potato, olive and rosemary filling

This week is Hedgehog Awareness Week and I can't keep saying it enough. Yesterday I already wrote an Old Prickly post, but now I am going to continue with the all important hedgehog theme. I made suitable hedgehog shaped ravioli with a potato, olive and rosemary filling. I have made hedgehog ravioli before, but the potato filling was a first for me. All the components tasted in the mix, so it worked really well and I liked this ravioli version a lot.

As the May theme for The Vegetable Palette challenge is “your favourite vegetable”, I thought I'd share this recipe there as well. The Vegetable Palette is a monthly vegetarian food blogging challenge hosted by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table. I though long and hard what would be my favourite vegetable, as it constantly changes and there are many, but potatoes are pretty much always up there on the top of my list. They are so versatile, subtle yet tasty and also easy to cook in many shapes and forms. So there you have it, I love potatoes! In this recipe I of course combined them in a way I have never done before, which was also a great experience. 

 

I will also share this recipe with another food blogging challenge, Pasta Please, which is hosted this month by Jen from Jen's Food and created by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. The theme in May is free, as long as the recipe contains some pasta. 

Here is my recipe for these small prickly beasts and it does make quite an array of them:

Pasta:

400 g grade 00 pasta flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

Filling:

500 g potatoes

200 g green olives

Sprinkle of salt

Fresh rosemary leaves

25 g grated mature cheddar

Method

Make the pasta first by kneading the pasta flour, eggs and salt into a firm dough. Let it rest wrapped in a cling film in the fridge for at least one hour.

Boil the peeled potatoes until they are done and mash them. Let the mash cool. Grind the olives into a smooth paste with a mortar and pestle and add them to the mash. Also add the salt, rosemary and little grated cheddar.

Start working the pasta dough thinner and thinner by rolling it through a pasta machine. Once you are happy with the texture and thinness, cut some hedgehog shapes from the dough. Put a little teaspoonful of the potato filling onto a hedgehog shape, brush the edges with water and press it closed with another hedgehog.

Cook the hedgehog ravioli until they are al dente and serve. I served them simply on a bed of salad drizzled with olive oil. Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Grilled pepper ravioli in hedgehog shapes

I enjoy making ravioli very much. It's quite a bit of work, but so rewarding when you have the end product. I like eating light pasta dishes in the summer, and already a few of these ravioli can be enough for a light summer meal! I thought that my ravioli filling was quite vibrant this time, and of course you can fill some other shaped pasta with it as well. I served the pasta with homemade radish leaf pesto, which is in my mind the best kind of pesto.

These hedgehog ravioli come a little bit late for the Hedgehog Awareness Week this year, but shouldn't every day be about hedgehog awareness anyway? 

Please follow these instructions for making this dish.

Pasta:

400 g grade 00 pasta flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

Mix the ingredients and knead into a firm dough. Press the dough into a ball and let it rest wrapped in cling film in the fridge for at least one hour.

Later when you get to assembling the ravioli, roll out the pasta dough thinly with a pasta machine and cut shapes from it.

Ravioli filling:

3 yellow and orange romano peppers (or other peppers)

Vegetable oil for char-grilling

1 small shallot

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp olive oil

50 g vegetarian pasta cheese / vegetarian parmesan

A handful of fresh basil leaves

½ tsp oregano

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp salt

Breadcrumbs (depending on the texture of the paste)

Char-grill the peppers until they have some black grilling marks and roast them at 200C for about 10-15 minutes until they are fully soft with some additional roasting flavours.

Cook the finely chopped shallot and garlic in little olive oil in a pan until soft.

Grate the cheese and purée all ingredients into a firm paste. Add breadcrumbs if the paste seems to be too moist. I had to add about 4 tablespoons to get my moist peppers to settle.

Cut hedgehog-shaped pieces (or any other shapes) from the rolled out pasta dough with a cookie cutter, fill the small hedgehog bellies with the filling (about 1 teaspoon each) and press firmly together. A light brushing of water around the edges helps the ravioli to stick together.

Once assembled, boil the pasta in water until al dente.

Radish leaf pesto:

The leaves from a bunch of radishes

1 clove of garlic

30 g cashew nuts

3-4 tbsp olive oil

A sprinkle of salt

The pesto can be prepared before the pasta making and left in the fridge.

Blanch the radish leaves for ten seconds in boiling water and quickly transfer them into cold water and then drain. Purée the leaves with the other ingredients and place the pesto into the fridge.

Serve the pasta with the pesto and some additional grated vegetarian pasta cheese as the spines and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Red pepper ravioli

I am such a big fan of homemade filled pasta, and I always try to make up new variations of it. They do take some effort to make, but the results are normally phenomenal! Today I made some giant ravioli (well, could always be bigger...), which had a nice and intense red roasted bell pepper filling.

Here are the ingredients and the method for making this pasta dish. You can combine the ravioli with just a simple tomato sauce or even just with butter and cheese and a side salad (I have made photos of each serving suggestion, please see below).

Pasta:

400 g flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

Filling:

2 red peppers

1 tsp olive oil (for brushing the peppers for roasting)

3 tbsp pine nuts

1 garlic

50 g Jarlsberg cheese

½ tsp salt

1 tbsp fresh oregano leaves

5 tbsp breadcrumbs (check consistency before adding all)

Method:

Make the pasta first as it needs to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Knead the flour with the salt and eggs into a firm dough. Add little water if the dough is too tough. Once you are happy with the texture, wrap the dough in a cling film and set to rest in the fridge.

For the filling quarter the peppers and remove the seeds. Brush them with olive oil and roast in the oven at 180C for about 30 minutes until they are soft and have roasted flavour.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan for a couple of minutes. Add the chopped garlic into the pan just to be heated through quickly. Grate the cheese and then puree all the filling ingredients to a firm paste with a hand mixer, and add more or less breadcrumbs depending on the moisture of the mix. You wouldn't want a runny filling as it can escape the ravioli more easily.

Then start making thin pasta sheets. Roll the dough in small batches a few times through a pasta machine to make thin sheets. Cut out whatever shapes you like of the sheets with a cookie cutter or a knife, and fill them with a generous teaspoon of the filling by leaving an edge of about 1 cm all around. Brush the edges with water and then stick the pasta pieces firmly together. Press them down with a fork if needed. Set to side.

When the whole dough has been worked on and filled, boil water in a large pan and cook the ravioli until al dente and serve. Also check out my other ravioli recipes here.

Stay hungry and share your pasta making experiences with me!

Your VegHog

Spinach and lemon hedgehog shaped ravioli with asparagus filling

I received quite many good comments on my original hedgehog shaped ravioli and I liked them myself as well, so I decided to make a different variation but keep the same shape. This time I decided to make some colourful pasta with spinach and a hint of lemon because it's tasty and looks cute and I also absolutely love asparagus filling in ravioli. I hope you'll like these too!

So here are the steps for making this whole dish:

The side salad:

Small sweet red peppers

Mozzarella balls

Fresh basil leaves

Olive oil

Make the side salad first as then you don't have to worry about it later. I have already published this side dish as the Pepper and mozzarella appetisers and it's a nice addition to this dish.

Wash the red peppers and place them into an oven dish. Brush them with olive oil and bake at 180C for about 15 minutes until they are soft. Cut the peppers in half after they have cooled down. Stuff a mozzarella ball wrapped in a basil leaf into each pepper half and let them wait in the fridge. Done!

The pasta dough:

400g grade 00 pasta flour

4 eggs

100g fresh spinach leaves

Lemon juice

Salt

First quickly boil the spinach in water for about 3-5 minutes and drain it well. Press some lemon juice on it and mix. Pour the pasta flour on a table, break the eggs into a dent in the middle of the flour pile and add some salt and then the spinach. 

Heavily knead until you have a firm dough. If the dough is too tough, add a little olive oil to make it smoother or if it's too runny, add more flour. Finally knead the dough into a ball, wrap into cling film and place to the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

The ravioli filling:

5 small asparagus

2 garlic cloves

Bread crumbs

Vegetarian pasta cheese

Black pepper

Steam the asparagus and chop the garlic cloves small. Grate some vegetarian pasta cheese. Mix these ingredients with bread crumbs and black pepper. The filling must not be too moist, add more bread crumbs if needed and cool it down before filling the pasta.

Start rolling the pasta dough with either a pasta machine or a rolling pin and make thin sheets of it. Use a hedgehog shaped cookie cutter (or any other shape will also do) to cut many pieces.

Place a small amount (about a teaspoon) of filling on the piece, brush the sides with water and stick another pasta piece on it. The water helps them stick well together, but additionally press them firmly together with your fingers or a fork.

Boil the ravioli for about 10-12 minutes in salt water until the filling is warm and the pasta al dente. They should float on the surface when cooked.

The sage butter:

Sage leaves

100g butter

Sage butter is a divine addition to any pasta dish. It takes about 10 minutes to make this, so you can start preparing it at a later stage.

Heat the butter in a pan and add the sage leaves. Keep heating at moderate heat and stir occasionally. The butter should get brown but not burn and the sage leaves should get crispy.

Mix the ravioli with the sage butter, serve with the small pepper appetisers and enjoy!

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog