My Ravioli Recipe

I love the tupperware ravioli maker that I got from my friend Anne. Works great with my pasta machine, ha!

Making your own pasta is a lot easier than it sounds, although here are a few tips:

- pasta dough dries out pretty fast, so when you run it through the pasta machine or flatten it with a rolling pin--use up all the dough before it dries.

- put some flour in between your flattened sheets of pasta to keep from sticking

- be prepared for a mess if your kids help you

Basic pasta recipe:

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons olive oil

Make a little hole in the flour and put the eggs in it. Mix very, very thoroughly and slowly add the olive oil. Knead until smooth, this could take a while.
Let it sit in saran wrap for half an hour.


My ravioli fillings are as follows:

ricotta filling

1 cup ricotta
1 egg
salt
pepper
very finely chopped parsely (optional)

meat filling

1 cup of minced meat, I blend this one more time to make it very fine
1/4 onion, minced finely
salt
allspice



My tomato sugo:

1 can of whole, peeled tomatoes. (Or 4-6 fresh, peeled tomatoes)
2 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
salt
sugar

Put a small saucepan on medium heat and add some olive oil when it's hot.
Add tomatoes and fry them just for a little.
Add water, until the tomatoes are covered. Add the garlic, equal amounts of salt and sugar. Some people also like a dash of balsamico.
Simmer and let the water almost evaporate, add more water and let it simmer again. Now you can either use a mixer to puree the tomatoes, or a potato masher if you want it more chunky.
Optional: add a handful of chopped basil and/or parsely

Boil the filled ravioli for about 3-5 minutes depending. Toss in either tomato or cream sauce and serve immediately.

Unfortunately for my blog viewers, we ate our delicious ravioli before I could take any pictures! :-)

Bulgogi

I loved this stuff when I first tried it, and if I had my way I would eat it every single weekend!

Bulgogi:

The whole idea is simple, marinate your meat the evening before.
I buy tenderloin or sirloin for my beef and ask them to slice it really thin. At home I cut it in about finger-long strips and marinate.

Marinade:
3/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup broth
5-6 garlic cloves
1/8th cup of sliced ginger
1/3 cup of brown sugar
1 shotglas of sake
3 green onions, sliced thinly lengthwise
3-4 tablespoons of sesame oil

optional: julienned strips of carrot

For variety I marinade pork and turkey meat as well, although I substitute brown sugar for white sugar and use less ginger on the pork.
Tastes best if you marinate overnight but 3-6 hours can also do the trick.

We like to eat the Sangjju Ssam bulgogi where you put the rice, meat and ssam jang sauce into a lettuce leaf.
The ssam jang sauce we had at the restaurant was pretty sweet and not spicy at all, I did find a few spicy recipes as well though:

4 Tbs of soybean paste (Korean-doenjang/Japanese-Miso)
4 Tbs medium ground red chili powder (or less depending on how spicy you like it)
1 tsp sugar
2 green/spring onion
4 cloves garlic
1 Tbs of sesame seeds
1/2 Tbs of sesame oil
1 Tbs rice wine
1 Tbs soy sauce

water

Scrumptious Turkey and stuffing!

This Christmas I made my best turkey and stuffing ever, so I wanted to put up my recipe for all.
I bought a 6.4 kg Turkey (about 14 1/2 lbs) that took 2 days to defrost. Once it was defrosted, I rinsed it inside and out, patted it dry and took out the giblets for gravy. I rubbed the turkey down with lemon, lots of extra juice went inside too, letting everything soak in for a bit. Then I literally took a handful of olive oil and rubbed it into the outside skin as I sprinkled lots of salt. For spices I used thyme, sage and mixed pepper. (Pink pepper goes great with turkey!)
To make sure my turkey would be tasty enough, I also added ur basic chicken seasoning a little. Once the turkey was all rubbed up, I covered it with bacon slices, pinning it on the legs and other parts with tooth picks. This way you don't have to baste the turkey, the bacon drippings ensure moisture. What's important is to stuff the turkey BEFORE you put the bacon on it, otherwise it's pretty tedious! ;-) As far as I remember, that was all I did for the actual turkey.
I put the turkey neck into a pot of water, along with boullion, 3 garlic cloves and celery leaves with a few whole pepper corns, brought it to a boil and let simmer for about 2 hrs. I made about 2 litres (slighly over half a gallon) of turkey stock with that.
For the stuffing I used:
2 packages toast bread, cut into cubes, then oven dried
2 cups chopped and cooked chestnuts
1 package of raisins
2 sweet onions
1 large celery stalk, chopped, without leaves (you need those for gravy)
1/1 cup of white sweet wine

I realized afterwards that some dried plums or apricots would have gone wonderfully with this stuffing, as well as 1 or 2 red onions. (There's always next time!) All the ingredients were mixed together, without the wine. Next, I poured as much of the turkey stock over the stuffing until everything was relativley moist, then poured the wine over it. Stuffed the turkey, stuffed the tray, covered the turkey with bacon, covered it with tin foil and shoved it into the oven. We had the temperature on pretty high, at about 200 C° and it only took like 3 hours to make the turkey. For the gravy, I just added some wine and some drippings and used cornstarch to thicken it. You use less fat that way and it still tastes perfect. The picture looks a bit weird, but ask everyone who ate it and they will swear it was fantastic!

Schnitzel!

Here is my Schnitzel recipe, the real viennese ones use veal cutlets, but pork cutlets are fine too and turkey schnitzels are just delicious. For those of you who want to try that, there are a couple of tricks to making Schnitzel.
Firstly, do NOT fry them in oil. It's not to deep fry, u need to use some sort of shortening, my grandma uses butter and I use sunflower margerine. We don't want our schnitzel to be brown on the outside and raw on the inside, so use low flame and no oil. (Well, if you use butter be sure to but a little bit of oil in so that the butter doesn't burn!)
Secondly, you do have to beat them. I have a wooden mallet that I use, I cover the meat with a piece of ceran wrap so that nothing sprays. (My mom's trick) U don't have to beat it a lot if u are using turkey as it might just tear. For pork, though, beat it and it kind of spreads out. The real viennese schnitzel have to be beat so thin that you can see the shadow of your hand behind it!

Anyhow, you need 3 stations for schnitzel: a plate of flour, a plate of egg and a plate of breadcrumbs.
I put a bit of soy sauce in the egg mixture for flavour and I buy breadcrumbs that have spices in it. Otherwise, you can just put some salt, pepper and/or dried parsley bits in the breadcrumbs.

To sum it up:
1) beat the meat
2) pat flour into it
3) dip in egg mixture
4) dip in breadcrumb mixture, be sure to press real hard and cover all wet spots with it
5) fry for about 12-15 min in fat, not oil

voilà, you have schnitzel. Serve them with a wedge of lemon and they taste great.
This is the same principle for cordon bleu too, except that you use chicken and put a slice of cheese and a slice of ham in a slit that you cut in the chicken's breast. I deepfry cordon bleu in my deepfrier though, and they come out fine if I bread them twice.
Another yummy idea, for those who can find cheap camembert, is to do this to camembert or mozzarella. It tastes really good with french bread and a big salad. Here they serve breaded camembert with cranberry sauce and it's super delicious. Just be sure to eat it hot, or it doesn't tase that good. Enjoy!

Chicken and Turkey Wellington

Last Christmas I didn't give you my heart, no, but I did make a stuffed Turkey Wellington. I thought it would be really complicated but it was easy and looked oh-so-fancy.

1 Kg/2.2. lbs Turkey meat, one piece, no bone
4-6 spring onions
2 cans mushrooms
handful of fresh parsley
1 1/2 apples, peeled and chopped
1/2 can of cranberries
1 package of puff pastry, I think mine was like 759 grams, like 3/4 kilo.

I bought about 1 kilo (2 lbs) of turkey filet, I think it was breast. It looked like a rather large chunk, so I sliced it ALMOST all the way through and then folded it open.
For the filling, I fried up some spring onions, mushrooms, parsley, and some apple chunks. Basically, what you would put into your normal turkey stuffing but without bread cubes.
Next, I spread the stuffing (be sure to chop it small) on the meat, and then rolled it up and tied it with cooking yarn. (At least that's what they call it here...)
Next, I browned the roll from all sides, not too much though, just enough to seal the pores. I also hadn't put any spices on it yet, it's better to do that after it has been browned.

Now, the best thing to do is to let the roll cool off before you use the puff pastry on it or the puff pastry melts a bit and any decorations you do won't look pretty anymore.
I put the turkey roll on my baking pan, the oven was on about 180 C° (350 degrees Fahrenheit). I arranged the puff pastry sheet over the turkey roll, not covering the bottom on which it lay. Before, I cut of a strip of the puff pastry and cut out some diamond shapes that I arranged to look like flowers. (All the artists may let their imaginations run wild)
For that pretty shine, you can either brush milk all over the pastry, or egg yolk, egg white or a whole egg that has been slightly whipped. Milk makes it the shiniest in my opinion, but egg will make any decorations stick well.
I think I left it in the oven for about 45 min, not exactly sure. I would poke near the bottom of the turkey with a knife and watch what color the liquid was that came out. Since it was already browned it didn't take that long to cook, and it actually came out a little too dry since I was afraid of having an un-done birdie.
Sadly, I have no picture,since it did look rather cute, especially when you start to slice it and you can see the swirl on the inside! I had put cranberries in the filling for sweetness sake, but I am sure that any sort of filling will do. I would suggest this way of making a turkey since it looks real fancy when finished, though it only takes you about 30 min. to prepare it. He he he!

Oh, before I forget it, a nice way of making chicken breast (for visitors, for example) is to cut little pockets into the chicken boobs, fill them with something like onions and mushrooms, secure the opening with a toothpick and brown them. Then u also make them "wellington", be sure to take out the toothpicks first though, cover them in puff pastry and stick them into the oven. Cheap, easy yet a nice "adult food", haha.