Cheese ravioli with meat sauce - a photo essay

Cheese and spinach ravioli with tomato and meat sauce

First I grew some Roma tomatoes.

Then I sliced them in half, seeded them, coated them with olive oil and seasoned them with onion, garlic, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper, to roast for 2.5 hours. All with help from my mom.

Then one of the glass pans exploded in the oven. So we waited for it to cool and then started over with the second batch of tomatoes.

The tomatoes came out of the oven roasted and caramelized just right.



I sauteed onion, garlic, ground beef and button mushrooms.



Then, I squeezed as much liquid out of the tomatoes as I could - it wasn't a lot. Then I added in white wine.

While the sauce simmered, we mixed up a filling of cheese, spinach, basil and garlic for the raviolis.

But then the pasta maker didn't work. So we had to roll the dough out by hand.

The dough came out thicker than it should have, a little tougher from all the handling and the ravioli were a little malformed.

But they stayed together in the boiling water and tasted fine. The sauce was great, but next time I want to make homemade pasta sauce I'll just use canned.

No thanks, Qui-NO-a

I continued my work on Resolution No. 6 this week with another new ingredient I'd never used before. I decided to try quinoa, which is not really a grain, but is often used in place of grains for people with wheat and gluten allergies.

Somehow in my head I assumed quinoa was a bit like couscous, which I love cooked up in chicken broth with toasted pine nuts and honey. I found a recipe for herbed quinoa from the Food Network Web site and I was all set to go. The quinoa, which I bought in bulk in the organic section of a local grocery store, was added to boiling chicken broth and lemon juice, and then covered with the heat off for 15 minutes.

While the quinoa was cooking, I made up the dressing of lemon juice and zest, thyme, basil, parsley and olive oil to mix into the quinoa when it finished cooking.

To go along with the side, I marinaded some chicken breast in lemon juice and thyme, and grilled them up with a little olive oil.

When the quinoa was done, it was fluffy and tasted okay to me. I sat down to eat my plate of chicken, quinoa and string beans. And things were going just fine, though the texture of the quinoa became a little less palatable as it cooled. I was halfway through my meal when I took a forkful of the quinoa into my mouth - and suddenly it started coming up instead of going down, if you know what I mean.

Needless to say, after that I lost my appetite and I think I probably won't eat quinoa again. I even work up with a little bit of a rash on my face today, which may be completely unrelated, but which I will blame on the quinoa.

I tried to find some information online about allergies to quinoa and there didn't seem to be much, but according to wikipedia, which we all know is a great source of information, quinoa seeds can have a coating on them that is mildly toxic if it is not washed properly. I assume my quinoa was washed before I purchased it, especially since no one else in my family got sick, but perhaps that was the reason I couldn't keep it down.

At any rate, I am ready to move on to the next new ingredient - and this time I will do a little better research on how to wash it.