Culinary Adventures Part II

In late December I decided to embark on the third of my three Culinary Adventures, ravioli (or another type of stuffed pasta). I decided to make agnolotti from Mario Batali's book, Molto Mario. So far every recipe we've made out of this book has been excellent, so while I knew this would be a time consuming experiment I was pretty sure the result would be an excellent meal.

I've had agnolotti once before, so I knew they were supposed to look like little bricks wrapped in pasta. My last stuffed pasta experience, however resulted in exploded ravioli...the guts of my poor little ravioli floating in the boiling water. This time I was determined to keep the guts in the pasta and thought keeping extra pasta on the edges would be the best way to guarantee this. Rather than look like agnolotti my pasta looked an awful lot like ravioli.
As I was dropping my supersized agnolotti/ravioli into the water I remembered that I was recently told that the best way to avoid exploding pasta was to cook them at less than a full boil. Huh...I remembered too late to correct my pasta making, but I did use a less violent boil and no stuffing escaped!

As it ends up, the filling was excellent...the pasta was good but the pasta around the edges was a bit undercooked and could have used a few extra minutes of cooking time.

Next time I'll try to make the pasta the right and I'll cook them a little longer...otherwise, I'd consider this experience a success!