Yesterday one of my friends came over and we tackled homemade ravioli. We started around 5:30 and finished around 8:30 (though that included a run to the grocery store for some forgotten ingredients). It took a good bit of elbow grease as we didn't have a pasta machine, but it worked nonetheless!
We followed a great pasta-making tutorial from here and here, and filled the ravioli with this delicious butternut squash-goat cheese puree. The only things I'd do differently from the recipes are a) use less salt when roasting the squash, leaving room to season the filling later and b) use half semolina flour in the pasta. We used 100% all-purpose (which she says is allowable), but the texture was not terribly firm and made it harder to control the shape of the pasta. Semolina flour is supposed to be sturdier.
The ravioli was accompanied by roasted purple asparagus I picked up on a trip to the farmers' market on Saturday. I couldn't resist the tables piled high with local asparagus--both green and purple--and stopped to ask the owner of one stand what the difference between them was. He told me to find out for myself, and proceeded to slice off part of a stalk and hand it over. In general it tasted like--you guessed it--asparagus, though perhaps a little milder. According to Wikipedia, the purple cultivar was developed in the region around Albenga, Italy, and is higher in sugar and lower in fiber than its green counterpart. Sadly, it turns green after prolonged cooking, though apparently a quick sauté will not affect the color.
