An Interesting Lesson and a Rookie Mistake

You're probably wondering what's in the picture above. Well, it's the leftovers from last night's dinner. (I forgot to take a picture at dinner--not that it matters--learn why below.)

A little background. Due Amici is a great Italian restaurant here in downtown Columbus. According to a friend, they at one point had an amazing butternut squash ravioli in a sage-cranberry cream sauce. She and I recreated it once at her house--and it was great. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make it again, using won ton wrappers instead of fresh pasta. I froze the ravioli, and kept them in a Ziploc until I wanted to use them. Which was last night.

Interesting lesson: there's a reason why good ravioli is made with real pasta dough and not won ton wrappers. They don't hold up to the slightest overcooking, becoming instead a gluey, sticky mess that fall apart when tossed with a brown butter sage sauce.

Which leads me to the rookie mistake: For reasons unbeknownst to me (laziness? distraction? plain stupidity?) I dumped the entire bag of frozen ravioli into the boiling water, bringing the water to a tepid standstill and forcing me to wait until it heated back up and the ravioli floated slooooowly to the surface. When I removed the ravioli from the water pot into the serving dish, they were a soggy, gloppy, tragic mess.

Needless to say, I was deeply upset, knowing that I should have known better. (NB: when adding ravioli to boiling water, add a little at a time, giving them room to move around and not congeal together. Also, it keeps the water from cooling down too much.)

Granted, once I tossed in the cranberries (dried, reconstituted in chicken broth to cut some of their sweetness), salt, pepper, and some Gorgonzola, it still tasted pretty good, and my dinner date even went back for seconds.

The moral of the story, kids: I'll be learning to make fresh pasta AND I won't be overcrowding the pot again. Live and learn, right?