Homemade pasta is easy with our KitchenAid stand-up mixer, which is used for mixing, kneading, and rolling. The long prep time includes a half hour of the dough resting. Half of the pasta dough is cut into fettuccine, the favorite of our children, and the rest we make into cheese ravioli.

Alternate Preparations: Squash Ravioli

We start by making the dough. We break each egg into a small bowl and then pour into the bowl of our 6-quart KitchenAid stand-up mixer. We add the oil and then with the flat beater, we turn the machine to stir speed and beat to mix up the eggs.

Next, we add the flour with the machine off, trying to keep the beaten eggs in the middle with a wall of flour all around them. We turn our mixer to speed 2 and mix for 20 seconds. We add the water and mix again for 20 seconds. We scrape the dough off the beater with a spatula and switch to the dough hook. We knead on speed 2 for about two minutes. The dough has come together and is looking good. We knead again on speed 2 for two minutes.

At this point the dough is elastic and a little sticky. We remove the dough from the mixer and hand knead it for a minute on our cutting board. We wrap it in plastic wrap and set it aside for 30 minutes to rest.

After about 15 minutes of the dough resting, we put a large pot of water on the stove to cook the pasta. We turn it on medium-high heat. Then we combine the ricotta, Locatelli, parsley, chives, and pepper. We taste for seasoning and then break the egg into a small cup. We beat it up a bit with a fork and then add to the cheeses. We stir well and set aside for the ravioli.

When the dough is ready, we cut it into four pieces and flatten each piece by hand. Once we have flattened the pasta to about ½ inch thick, we prepare to feed it into the pasta roller attachment of our KitchenAid mixer. Two of the pieces we prepare as we did for the fettuccine. These are for the kids. The other two pieces we prepare for ravioli. We feed the kids an early dinner, cooking their fettuccine while the ravioli are being filled. We will need to make sure we have a lot of boiling water when the ravioli are ready.

We start with the pasta roller on its widest setting – 1. We feed the dough into the roller, with the mixer on speed 2. We are careful not to push the dough into the roller, nor pull it as it emerges from the opposite side. Having the attachment for the KitchenAid is wonderful as we do not have to exert any effort. The roller does all of the work and does it well.

After feeding the dough into the roller, we fold the dough and feed it back into the roller. We do this five or so times to work out all of the air bubbles. It is not necessary to add additional flour – the dough is smooth and easy with which to work.

We then decrease the roller width to two and feed the dough into it. We decrease the width to three and repeat the process. Finally, we repeat the process at settings of four, then five, then six, and then seven.

As we make our 2 long sheets of pasta, we place them, dusting with flour, and folding halfway, on our cutting board. We cut each long sheet into fourths and work with one at a time. We are generous with the flour so the dough does not stick. The sheets are about 3½ inches wide. With a pizza cutter, we cut each sheet into 2 inch by 3½ inch rectangles. We should have covered the dough with plastic wrap and a damp cloth on top of that because by the end of the ravioli making, it does begin to dry out.

We spoon a teaspoon of filling into the center of each rectangle, leaving a nice sized border. With our finger dipped in water, we wet the edges of the rectangle and then fold over. We carefully seal the three sides, trying not to have any filling reach the edge. We dust each 2-inch square with flour and set aside on a large plate. We repeat until all the ravioli are filled. We refrigerate the leftover filling for another time, remembering that there is a raw egg in there.

We add the ravioli and a pinch of salt to the boiling water and stir. We lower the heat slightly so the water is more like simmering with the ravioli. While the ravioli are cooking, we reheat our tomato sauce in a large pan. We cook the ravioli for 6 minutes and taste. We want the pasta tender and the filling cooked through. When the pasta is cooked, about 6½ minutes, we drain it using our “spider”, a chinese strainer, a few at a time and gently put them into the sauce. We stir carefully and serve with extra Locatelli.

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