Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Fish Ravioli in Cream Sauce (Ravioli di Pesce)

One of the benefits of using farm-fresh eggs is extremely yellow pasta.  This fresh pasta was made with just two eggs and shone like the sun because of the gloriously orange yolks that come from pasture-fed chicken eggs.
The filling is made from cod poached in white wine, lemon juice, garlic, thyme and a pinch of salt.  The poaching liquid gets mixed with butter, garlic and cream and cooked down into a rich sauce.  It sounds (and smelled) very delicious but I'm surprised to say that it could have been creamier.  The filling was a little dry, perhaps because I used frozen cod and perhaps because I overcooked it.  The problem with making each recipe once is that they often don't come out perfectly the first time.  The good thing about making each recipe once is that I try things I otherwise wouldn't and have a better sense of what I should do differently next time.
So next time I would use four or six ounces of white fish instead of twelve, because I ended up with more filling than dough to put it in.  I might also try using fresh tilapia instead of frozen cod.  I might start the sauce with a roux instead of plain butter because it separated and I had to skim a layer of yellow off the top - possibly another reason it didn't taste as rich as it looked.

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