Cooking with Nonni

As I said before, I come from a background of a large Italian family.

I remember making raviolis at Nonni's house. We would make the filling for the raviolis and we would make the pasta dough.

She had this beautiful old enamel table and the pasta dough for the raviolis would be rolled out across the entire table. And we would sit there with little bowls and spoons and drop the ricotta cheese and the filling. Then somebody would bring in another big layer of rolled out dough and flop the it on top. Then we would gently press and cut into raviolis. We would then take a little little fork and press into the edges of the raviolis.

Then you would powder the entire table and let the raviolis lay out all day to dry and harden. Turning them once when one side was hard. That way they would be hard enough to boil the next day.

You see, the dough cannot be fresh, it cannot be sticky like a pie dough. It's got to be hardened.