It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
OK, it wasn’t THAT bad, but when trying a new dish – especially a slightly technical one – with guests is always a bit of a dice roll. I DID warn them all that we might end up ordering pizza by the end LOL!
I’ve made Poached Egg Ravioli many times, with it’s beautiful silky yolks resting in a nest of truffled ricotta and spinach. After a perfect 3.5 min boil, a single giant ravioli is plated and, once cut through, the creamy yellow flows into a bacon Brown Butter sauce. VOILA! <a combo of these recipes HERE and HERE are simply magical>. It’s the #1 request from guests – when I give them a choice.
SO OF COURSE, always on the lookout for ways to challenge myself, I figured how much better it would taste SMALLER with tiny quail eggs?! The trick is that a chicken egg poaches perfectly with the cook time of #6 rolled fresh pasta – 3.5 minutes. Quail eggs poach in only 1.5 minutes (see my notes about these little devils HERE), which means a thinner pasta is required.
My big mistakes were starting with a pasta that was too wet. This is one instance where a drier pasta is preferred, and mine was WET. No matter how much extra flour I used, the recipe I usually use <included in Gordon Ramsay’s Masterclass HERE> just wasn’t doing what I wanted, but I was short on time and used it anyhow. Let’s just say it did NOT willingly do a #7 roll, but I thought it would still work at the time…
The second mistake was not letting my ricotta strain to get all the extra moisture out. In the end, about half of the prepared ravioli disintegrated on me, but thankfully the half I did have were enough to feed my dinner party 3 pieces each with a DELICIOUS tomato/lemon/pepper sauce – and the mini quail egg “surprise” in the middle was perfectly poached along with the pasta in 1.5 minutes precisely!
pro TIP:
Always strain out your pasta fillings!
theakhomekitchen
Too much moisture will soak into the
pasta sheets and keep you from getting
that perfect ‘al dente’ touch in the end.
Garden Beet, Fennel + Grapefruit
Salad with ChevrePoached Quail Egg Ravioli with Roasted Tomato + Garlic Confit
Sous Vide Steak with Parsley Salad
19.11.22
All things considered, mistakes do happen. Maybe one day I’ll learn to test a recipe at least once before inviting people over, but not likely! And no one seems to mind. Worst case, I can always pull a Cassoulet out of the freezer, or make a quick dried pasta to soak up my delicious sauces. But now that the troubleshooting has been done, I’ll definitely be making this dish again!
Do you have a dish you’ve been practicing?? Share the details!
