Preparation

• To prepare the meat or fish-filled ravioli, start with the pasta.
  Place the flour in a bowl, add the eggs in the center, and season with salt.

  

• Use a fork to mix the eggs with the flour, then transfer the mixture onto a rolling mat and knead vigorously by hand until you have a smooth and homogeneous dough.

  

• At this point, cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 30 minutes at room temperature.

  

• While the dough is resting, proceed with preparing the meat filling.

  

• Sauté the finely chopped carrot, onion, and celery in a pan with a drizzle of oil, letting them soften, possibly adding a little water.

  

• Add the ground meat.

  

• Finish cooking; the filling should be moist but not wet.

  

• Transfer the filling into a bowl, add the Parmesan, and mix well; adjust the salt if necessary.

  

• Depending on your taste, the filling can be used as is or blended in a mixer if you prefer it more compact.
  Set aside, waiting to roll out the pasta.

  

• Take a quarter of the dough from the dough ball and roll out the pasta.
  I use an old Imperia hand-cranked machine that I inherited from my grandparents 🙂 and despite being almost fifty years old, it works perfectly.
  If you don’t have the machine, you can roll out the pasta with a rolling pin.

  

• Place the sheet of pasta obtained on the mold or, as we say in Zena, a ravioliera, previously floured.

  

• The rolled-out pasta sheet should be the same size as the mold.

  

• Insert the filling using your hands or a teaspoon, cover with another sheet of pasta, and with the rolling pin, ensure the two sheets adhere well. If the pasta hasn’t dried because it was kept covered with plastic wrap, you won’t need to wet the edges to make the two sheets stick.

  

• Turn the mold over, and the ravioli will detach easily with your hands; if necessary, use a pasta wheel.

  

• Place the ravioli on a tray dusted with flour.
  Cook in salted boiling water for a couple of minutes.
  Drain and dress with the sauce you have prepared.
  To decorate the dish, I placed some ravioli on a sheet of pane carasau and a sprig of rosemary.
  I used the pane carasau simply because the roast sauce is very liquid, and the pane carasau allows for a discreet dip. 🙂

  

• For a perfect dough:

  1) For optimal dough results, follow the measurements: one egg of medium/large size for every 100g of flour; if you see that the dough is not soft, add very little water (one tablespoon at a time).

  2) Roll the dough well; to check if the thickness is right, just see if you can see your fingers through it.

  For a perfect filling:

  Just make sure the filling is moist but not wet, so cook your filling properly.

  For a perfect ravioli closure:

  1) My advice is to buy the mold; it is really the only accessory you need because the dough can be rolled out easily even with a rolling pin, but without a mold, everything is in vain.

  Meanwhile, the mold allows you to get ravioli of the same size, so cooking will be uniform, and they will also look beautiful.

  2) With the mold, you avoid air bubbles because after inserting the filling, you can use the rolling pin that you find in the package, and the closure of your ravioli will be perfect.

  3) The only precaution if you buy the mold is to flour it very, very well, as you can see from the picture above.