Yes.

Its ready.

Got it all prepared.

Its finished.

It's stunning.

Yes.

It's great.

It's all so ready.

So just let it all begin.

Hi, I'm Chris Fennimore, and welcome to the QED Cooks Kitchen.

Today we're making ravioli.

Or as we might say, her in Pittsburgh, Italian pierogis ravioli are simply filled pastas.

The final shape can be round a square or half moons.

And under most circumstances, ravioli are pretty labor intensive because the have to be made one at a time.

My dad's mom, we call her Nonna, used to make them in gigantic half moons to avoid some of that labor, but more traditionally they're about an inch or so wide.

Our first recipe actually uses frozen ravioli from the supermarket to make little appetizers.

It's finished.

Don't have to be Italian to enjoy this.

This happens to be an appetizer.

This is a, a ravioli, a toasted ravioli.

Appetizer that, that I actually made by mistake one time.

And now I've refined it.

Actually, I had leftover ravioli that that was sitting in the refrigerator, and I went to heat them up, and I put them in the oven just to warm.

And I walked away, forgot all about them.

When I came back, they were sitting on a tray and they were crispy on the outside.

And, so.

And the sauce, it all dried on them.

And so I just took one and I crunched in that it was so delicious.

And so this is thi is how, recipes up for a story.

Yeah.

So, you know I just went to the supermarket, and bought some frozen raviolis.

These happened.

I want to take these out and show them to you.

These are the little round ones.

You can use the square ones.

These happen to be cheese filled, but you could use the ones that have spinach and cheese.

You could actually use a meat ravioli.

It doesn't matter what kind of ravioli.

It's all the same.

I like these little round ones.

And for, for a very specific reason, that is that when they boil, there's a top and a bottom to these things.

This is true They're a staple in our house.

This is the bottom and this is the top because it has the rounded surface and the flat surface actuall when it boils cups a little bit.

And that's going to make the perfect place for us to put some sauce and cheese.

So what you want to do is to put these there are package directions.

You know how many minutes to cook this.

My guideline for, for cooking these is to cook them a little bit less than they sa on the, on the package for this because they are going to actually bake in the oven a little bit longer.

And the other thing is this people boil ravioli as if it is linguine or spaghetti.

Don't do that.

Oops.

I'm guilty.

Put the ravioli into, boiling water.

Salted.

You have to have at leas six quarts, I believe, of water with a good dose of salt.

Almos can't put too much salt in there for as far as I'm concerned.

And then what do you do differently?

Well, as soon as you put it in it has to come back to a boil.

You keep stirring it until it boils, then you lower the temperature to a simmer.

Because if you boi the ravioli too hard, they'll.

They'll burst.

They will, you know, if there' any little bit of air in them.

So I like to simmer them, until they're tender.

Usually it only takes about four minutes.

Okay.

So that's what, that's what we've done.

And actually then wha you want to do is to drain them.

And I put them into a bowl with a, a for a pound of ravioli.

I used about a half a stick of butter, four tablespoons of butter.

And, and, and jus toss them around in that butter until they get nice and coated with butter.

I'm happy right there.

You can stop right there.

And I'm fine.

Of course you could.

I mean, this is great.

A little grated cheese and, yo know, you have you have dinner.

But if you were entertaining guests then I'm doing tomorrow night.

So I'm being very close attention to this.

So now what I want to do is to put these all out onto a baking sheet, but you're putting them upside down.

I am putting them upside down, flat side up.

Okay, okay.

And the reason for this again is because we're going to put some sauce on here.

And I want some place for the sauce to sit.

A pound of ravioli makes, almost two trays of these.

No.

So it makes quite a bit.

Yes.

And, I cover the pan with some parchment paper for a couple of reasons.

One, it really, so they don't stick.

I mean, if you if these were to be just on the pan, even though they're coated in butter, the, oven temperature is going to possibly cause them to stick.

And then let's not even mention the cleanup.

Right.

So.

So this, just makes life that much easier.

Yeah, exactly.

I already made a pan out o the rest of those ravioli, so.

I'm exactly right.

It's a pan and a half out of one recipe.

Now.

And this is a great thing.

I always I'm always looking for jobs for kids in the kitchen.

Oh, yeah.

All you want to do i put a little dab on on each one.

You want to avoid the temptation to overload these raviolis.

Okay, now I'm, sure that this is your own homemade marinara sauce.

Not on your life.

Sysco.

You're doing it my way.

Came out of a jar.

Well, this is the kind of recipe that I feel really calls for, practicality.

You do not have to apologiz to me for this leftover sauce.

You know that.

You made that be fine.

But there are a lot of delicious jarred sauce.

I know I know, this happens to be one that's flavored with a little bit of basil.

But again, if you like the same thing with mushrooms or if you want a three cheese sauce or, you know, I like the garlic parmesan when it really is up to your taste, you can modify these in so many ways to make them your own.

You know, I could imagine that if you made, like an Alfredo sauce and these were, the spinach ravioli, would be a different, flavor profile.

But the, the, the, the concept would be exactly the same.

So I' just going to cover all of these because we have, you know, we got a few people here in the studio who might want to have a taste of this phone bank full of operators and a full crew and our health staff in the kitchen, and everybody always wants to sample.

Okay, I look at Cheez Whiz and this is a grated, Romano cheese.

It's low catelli Romano cheese.

I swear it looks like coconut.

The way it is.

Well, you know, I used I used a, micro planer to, to shave this.

And instead of a cheese grater and it comes wonderful.

Fine.

Like coconut.

Coconut.

And I want to put a nice dab on each one.

As far as I'm concerned, you can never use too much Romano cheese.

And if some spills over onto the side you don't have to worry about it because we put it on parchment paper.

So these are all good things.

That's a good smelling cheese.

This is this is a sheep's milk cheese as opposed to Parmigiano-Reggiano, which is a cow's milk cheese.

You know parmesan cheese, I do I know it, I live with it.

So.

Yes.

So there you go.

That's, Now.

Okay.

I'm afraid that's that's it about it.

What you what you have to d is to have an oven that's nice and preheated to about 375 degrees because, these don't have to cook.

What we all all we want to do is to crisp these up a little bit.

Okay.

To get the butter to, get nice and, almost a little brown edge, on these.

Just a light like the edge of a crepe right now.

I'm going to bring some over here.

I can't wait, I cannot wait.

I have a tray that we just.

He discovered by mistake.

Oh, pulled out of the oven.

And that's what they look like.

I mean, you could see it.

I love it because it makes a lot.

It sure does.

And we have a plate over there.

So let's let's have, let's put these out.

Oh.

You sure they don't look like they'll be slightly crunchy.

They look like they're going to be soft.

Oh no, no, no, they're a little crunch on the edges and on the bottom.

Yeah.

So just put those out.

That's that's enough for a tasteful color coordinated with the plate.

That is a little tiny painting plan that.

Why I'm going to have a taste of one.

Okay.

You go ahead.

You go.

Now let me ask as an appetizer.

You put these out and you expect people to pick them up like finger food or use it for toothpicks.

I think, you know, you know.

Right.

We're short on toothpicks here.

So.

Oh delicious.

You know they're soft.

But you still have that I just got to the crunch, the crunch around the outside of the you can make them a little crunchier if you want, but I actually like them just this way because just you get a little bit of that butter flavor.

Oh that's good on these.

Yeah.

So there you go.

Appetizer.

Baked.

What are we what you call these.

Baked ravioli The steak appetizer.

These raviolis are so easy and so delicious I'm not usually a big fan of convenience foods, bu these are so easy and delicious.

Over the years of people have sent in their recipes.

I noticed that so many of them are named for the relatives who used to make them like Uncle Mike's, Mike's Beef stew, or Grandma's apple pie.

And this next dis came to us from one of our QED Cooks regulars, Nina Mule Lyons who came in with her niece Molly to make Josephine's ravioli.

So many of the recipes tha we get are named after people, and I think that that's an important part of what these recipes are all about, is that they they give us a remembrance of somebody from our family, from our tradition.

And, Josephine was your mom.

Yeah.

And this is my mother's ravioli filling recipe.

You know, it's kind of funny.

Everyone always ask me for this recipe.

And, of course, I made it like her.

I just threw stuff together.

So really, many, many raviolis had to be made before I got this Just the way my mother made it.

And now people say, oh, that's just like your mother's.

So I'm very happy with it.

You got you got it.

It's a great filling but let's put it together, okay.

This is really quite easy.

I use I use half pork and half veal like a half a pound of each.

And actually if you want to use all turkey, if you want to use your veal, if you want to use beef, whatever you want to use that works really great with this.

But I use pork and veal because that's what my mother used.

And then you take is, you know, one of those little square containers of, spinach.

Squeeze it out really good, and it'll get kind of dry like this and break it up a bit and ad that you do have to dry it out.

You did a great job at drying this.

Well, I have really strong hands.

You know, if you have a potato ricer that works well.

Potato ricer is a good tool for drying out the, the spaghetti and I mean spinach.

Exactly.

And this is here, here's wher it gets a little bit different.

There's one egg in here, but there's also a cup of ricotta cheese.

So it's a mixture of both.

And I will just pull that out.

This is my combination of spices I did great.

I saw somebody grating the fresh nutmeg and that's what I did.

I grated some fresh nutmeg some salt basil and that's about it.

I mean the seasonin is pretty simple and I'll just sprinkle that so that it gets through and through.

Put a half a cup.

You can put more if you like it.

Of, I used, Grana Padano, which I've started to really like.

Also it's like a Parmigiano Reggiano, very similar.

And there's also some Romano in there because I like the sharpness of the Romano.

And, you know, they said Chris will do that garlic clove on the board.

And then somebody said, show u what to do with a garlic press.

Well, I use a garlic press, bu I love to watch Chris do that.

I know why they've seen me do that.

That's exciting.

I've actually never had a garlic press.

So who knows?

All you do is stick the garlic clove in there, you peel it, and there's only on clove of garlic in all of this, but it really perfumes it.

And it's because the press really gets the oils out and all you do is press it.

It's just a fine, very fine kind of stuff that comes off and just trim it off with the knife.

You just trim it off and it just really exudes all the oils and everything.

And then I like to kind of, you know, really make sure it gets mixed in.

And really that is al there is to do to the stuffing excep and I'm going to just wing it.

I'm just going to use my hands just like somebody else did this morning.

Oh yeah.

We, make meatballs, you got to g your hands in there.

Yeah.

It's just the old way.

And you know, I have to tell you, this morning when I was watching you, you were talking about cooking ravioli and I was thinking to myself, he stole my thunder.

I was going to say that.

Yeah.

Make sure that you always, have your have your water boiling about medium, you know, bring it, bring it to a boil, put them in.

And then if you boil them to heavily, they will just break.

Yeah they overdo it.

They just get, the other key to this, and you'll see, this is kind of a crumbly texture.

The other thing is, I have to admit, I called my local meat department at the store and said, you know, would you grind this meat up fine for me?

And they were more than happy to take care of that.

And they did that for me.

So you can do a finer grind than you would normally get done.

Yeah.

And if, if you don't want to, that's fine too.

I mean, this is peasant food an I just want to get this really well incorporated because that's when it tastes the best.

Now this makes a lot of ravioli.

Yeah, that's the same risk.

We have a crowd here.

But we don't have all day to make ravioli.

What I do is I use what I use, and then I put the rest in baggies in the freezer.

And then when I want raviolis I can have them at a moment's notice literally a moment's notice.

So I mean and I'll tell you what last night I pulled some out of the freezer and made some for my husband.

And he just he looked at me in amazement.

And that's when he said to me, if you're doing this on TV tomorrow, can a layperson make these?

And I said, yes, a layperson can make these.

Now here's where the twist comes.

Normally you would, you know, spen a lot of time making the dough.

But I have discovered egg roll wrappers.

You buy these in usually the produce department of your store.

And what I'm going to do is very quickly show you how easy this is.

These make a fantastic ravioli.

They're very delicate.

And I'm actually going to give Molly a couple of sheets to work with two.

And I'm going to give her some of the filling.

Molly are you in high school now.

Yes.

Where do you go to school.

I go to North Hills High School.

Okay.

You like it so far?

Yeah.

Are you a sophomore?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And my son is 14 and he's still eighth grade.

Oh, he's 13 and he's got ease in.

And so when he's 14, he'll be in freshman year.

So yeah, we're we're hoping he, he makes it to high school.

Yeah I mean we told him it's it's still, it's still in question, but, but you like it so far.

What's your favorite subject?

I really like English.

Okay.

Yeah.

My teacher is really good, too, so it helps.

Whats your teachers name?

Mrs.

Perry.

Okay.

Mrs.

Perry, you know, she.

That's good.

Plug in for the school.

And I have to say, you know, Molly made these fantastic rolls for Thanksgiving for her bread rivals, anyone So it's amazing.

So here's I'm going to show you how this is done.

You take this and you cut it once down the center.

And then you cut it again.

So you oh, you ge quite a few out of each sheet.

I get two ravioli out of each sheet and I'll show you how it goes.

Now, I jus taught Molly how to make these.

She picked it up real fast, but anyone can.

So you have these little squares, right?

You'll take a pastry brush and really get this good and wet.

Because here's the other trick to keeping them together.

Here you go Molly.

The other trick to keeping these together is to make sure that all the air is out.

So what we do is we take this I kind of press it flat.

You were saying there was a chef on here who actually made little patties to begin with?

I thought, boy, that's a great idea.

You can't do that.

You press it flat and you just go around the edges, work towards the center, just pressing it in, press it in.

If there's an air bubble, try to get it out.

I mean you don't have to be meticulous, you don't have to worr about it.

And there you have it.

If you want to make it fancy, you can cut around.

I even sometimes have used a dumpling maker when I want to get fancy.

You can get these in kitchen stores, but you know what?

This tastes just great the way it is.

Show us how to make some more.

I'm going to put, one of these or two of these in the water so we can have a taste here.

These, I just have some simmering water again.

You don't want to over boil these things now.

And, you know you can fill these pretty good and they hold together.

It's pretty amazing.

And you just press that air out and you have, you know, you have a ravioli.

And the great thing about this is this is a really thin very delicate.

It's actually very light.

It's a very light.

It's a very light qualit to the filling and to the yeah.

So two squares and do the whole thin with water, not just the edge, because you want to get a good seal.

Take this press and then just kind of around the edge, get the air out if you can.

I mean i can't be any easier than that.

And you know if you can, you know close an envelope if you can make meatloaf and close an envelope, you can make this recipe.

And, you know, I was talking to my Aunt Margaret, yesterday on the phone, and I was telling her about this.

She got so excited, she said, you mean you don't have to make the dough?

And I said, you know what?

You can make the dough.

On, you know, certain occasions when you have the time.

But this is so quick and so good that you just, Well, you know, you know, ravioli, actually, in our family i something that we used to buy.

We used to go to because there was a ravioli store that where you could get fresh, fresh raviolis.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So now let's say that these have simmered, we have a plate over ther I want I want to grab one out.

Grab these out of the water, get some idea of.

And now I can tell yo the sauce is extremely simple.

I use a very simple, marinara that I make myself.

But if you buy a marinara in a store, just send it out a little bit.

You know, this is really wha they call an Italy el confimento Or it's just very lightly put on top because you just.

These are so delicate.

You don't want to overwhelm them.

And so this is just garlic basil, onion good bit of olive oil and some really good Italian tomatoes.

And here's what we do.

We don't do a great glob of this here.

We do a lightly and we have some.

Actually I think this is Romano but that's what I like.

That's what I like.

Romano cheese.

And do you have your fork I do, you have my fork here.

Kind of have a little taste of this.

To make sure I'm going t get a little bit of that sauce at the sauce, I want the whole thing.

You know those are so delicate.

They really are.

They're very light.

It would be very hard to make pasta dough that thin and that perfect.

Exactly.

Oh that's a great tip.

Thanks to you.

Thanks to Josephine.

Thank you, Molly, for joining us.

You're a terrific kitchen helper.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Josephine never used wonton wrappers to make her ravioli, but Nina has gotten the filling just right.

And the pre-made wrappers are a very handy technique.

And of course, by including her niece, Molly, Nina is sending that tradition down.

One more generation.

I think I'm going to go and head out to the grocer right now and stock up on those wonton wrappers.

So I'll just say before I go, we do it for you, but we can't do it without you.

So keep cooking and keep watching.

Its all so ready.

So just let it all begin