Freak Out!

 Mr. Ripe's mother gave me a pasta maker as a gift maybe six months ago. I made a couple of different kinds of pastas, easy ones, that you just run through the machine and cut with the spaghetti attachment or chop with a knife to make "handkerchiefs". But in April, she also gave me a ravioli crimper! I was so happy with my little tool, but I wasn't sure I had the patience to make ravioli by hand. I also wasn't really inspired at the time to make the ravioli.

Recently, however, I was hit with inspiration. You know, it sort of just comes to you sometimes, and you can't escape it. Anyway, the idea for beet dough ravioli with some sort of cheesy filling popped into my head and, once there, it just wouldn't leave me alone. At first I thought I'd make beet ravioli and fill the things with greens. I bought baby mustard greens (so cute!) but then worried about my actual flavor profiles. I thought I should stay as simple as possible for my first ravioli attempt. Clean flavors that I knew would taste good together (at least the picture I had of them in my head definitely tasted good).

So I ditched the greens, and instead opted for two simple cheese fillings. One would have goat cheese and tarragon, the other would make use of the leftover beet puree and some Danish blue cheese. And, once cooked, I imagined these babies on a plate with lemon poppy butter. You read that right. Heaven.

I planned to make the raviolis the day before I planned to have people over to eat them. The dough was simple to make, and turns out the whole endeavor was a success that my dinner guests gobbled up and wanted more of. The only downside to the whole process was the sore shoulder that appeared just in time for my guests due to three hours spent the day before cranking out sheet after sheet of magenta pasta!

I will definitely make these again, and other kinds of filled pasta.