ravioli for dinner

I made a batch of pasta today, one and a half cups each of all-purpose and semolina flours to four and a half eggs. Half of it I rolled out and made up into ravioli, the first time I have done so. It was pretty tasty, but Jim told me that he doesn't care for blue cheese, which it did contain. You'd think I'd have learned that more than two months before our 33RD anniversary.

My ravioli didn't look as nice as those pictured. Some were downright lumpy. I served them in Roasted Garlic broth with slivers of Roast Pork (from Saturday).

I used the dough hook on my mixer to make the pasta dough and it was quick and efficient. While it looks cool to whip this stuff together by hand on a bread board I think I'll use the mixer in the future.

Please excuse me. I need to go roll out the second half of the pasta now - and freeze it.

Chinese New Year

Tomorrow is New Year's Day for Chinese and those who celebrate the Lunar New Year - so if I was Chinese, I'd stay home today and stuff scores of dumplings for soup. Then I'd have lots of relatives over at midnight to eat the soup.

But - being who I am, I had to work at the library until 8PM, which doesn't leave a lot of time for dumpling-stuffing.

I'm also not Chinese, of course, and haven't got a lot of mobile relatives to gather to my bosom but I did flash on a Twenty-First Century maneuver for New Year's Dumpling Soup in a flash.

I microwaved a bag of veggie dumplings (mine were from Trader Joe - in some places they are called Mandoo) and carefully floated/sank them in 3 pints of canned chicken broth, then warmed up the whole shebang to just below boiling.

I flavored it with a little white pepper, but if I had had some sherry or yellow wine on hand I'd have added a ounce of that.

For dipping sauce I use mostly soy sauce with a little flavored rice vinegar (sushi vinegar) and even less toasted sesame oil for the base. I added a few drops of red pepper oil and one small, super-hot dried pepper crumbled into a portion (about and ounce) and a crushed clove of garlic to another portion. Hey, presto, three dip sauces!

Happy New Year, Spring Festival, or etcetera.