Covered in flour

Last weekend I was covered in flour after making some homemade pasta for the first time. It took some time and was a little messy, but it was well worth it. I had so much fun and the pasta was very yummy (if I do say so myself)!

For my birthday this year, I finally got a pasta roller. I've been secretly wanting one for a very long time. The great thing about the one I got is that it attaches to my stand mixer for easy, crank-free, rolling. Everything is motorized. Ah, don't you just love technology!

I absolutely love love love all kinds of stuffed pasta: ravioli, tortellini, manicotti, cannelloni, ... So, for my first pasta endeavor, I decided to make eggplant stuffed ravioli from my favorite FoodTV chef, Giada De Laurentiis. You know me, got to always try the hard stuff first! I picked the eggplant recipe so we could use up some of our eggplant surplus from the garden. (Well, not quite a surplus, but close. With only two of us, it's not hard to do!)

I hesitantly made the pasta dough. I haven't had a good history with making doughs and bread, so I wasn't too confident that it would actually work. Giada's pasta dough recipe was pretty easy and surprisingly successful!

Here is the ravioli making in action:

First, I turned on the machine. Here we go!
Then, I kneaded the dough by passing it through the roller at the widest setting a few times. No reason to get your nails dirty with manual labor!
After passing it through the roller at narrower and narrower settings, I finally got one really long and really thin sheet of pasta dough. There is absolutely no way I could have done that by hand.
Now for the really fun part! I used my fun cookie scooper Nathan got me to dish out little mounds of eggplant and cheesy goodness along half of the pasta sheet.
Next, I folded the other half of the sheet over the filling and pressed the top dough to the bottom. I used another fun gadget I got for my birthday, a ravioli cutter, to separate the ravioli and trim up the edges. It makes it look pretty fancy! (Silly I know, but I love it!)
Finally, we boiled them up, drizzled on a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, sprickled on a little extra fresh oregano, and serve!
Yum! Yum!