Cheese Ravioli with Butter and Sage Sauce

In Italian, this dish is known as Ravioli di Pasta alla Ricotta, Burro d’Alpeggio alla Salvia. Sounds complicated, but it's remarkably easy to make homemade ravioli. A much more difficult task is writing a simple explanation of how to do it. Here goes nothing.....

 Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3 fresh eggs
• about a tablespoon of olive oil
• pinch of salt
• 6 tablespoons fresh sheep’s milk ricotta cheese
• 6 tablespoons mascarpone cheese
• 3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
• Grated zest of one lemon
• 5 ounces (150 grams) unsalted butter (This seems like a lot of butter to me. Change the volume at your discretion)
• pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• several fresh sage leaves

Methods:  

 Prepare the pasta dough by piling the flour on a countertop and making a ‘well’ in the flour into which the eggs, salt and olive oil are placed. Use a fork to gradually mix the wet ingredients into the dry. Knead the dough until smooth, adding more flour if the dough is too sticky to handle easily. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes. While the dough is resting prepare the filling by mixing the ricotta, mascarpone, and parmesan cheese, nutmeg and lemon zest together. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Roll the dough for the ravioli very thinly with a rolling pin into a rectangular shape.

Place the filling into a pastry bag or plastic freezer bag. (If you use a plastic bag, cut the tip off one of the corners to allow the filling to be squeezed out).  Repeatedly squeeze teaspoon-sized lumps of the filling on to the pasta about 2 cm apart until you have covered the lower half of the rolled out pasta rectangle with lumps of the cheese filling. Brush the top half of the pasta rectangle with water then fold it over the blobs of filling on the lower half. Use your fingers to press air pockets from between the ravioli then cut the dough between the little packets of filling using a pastry wheel or sharp knife.

Prepare a large pot of boiling salted water and cook the ravioli for about 3 minutes. While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter with the sage in a large skillet. Drain the ravioli and gently toss them in the sage butter mixture.