I guess I have been making pasta at home for at least 30 years, and ravioli have been a part of that quite often. I’ve tried a wide variety of tools to make ravioli, but until recently, no one method for doing so has been foolproof. Recently I discovered a technique on YouTube one evening, and it has inspired a revolution for me. The full video is called “Delicious Lobster Ravioli at 1 Michelin Star Bozar restaurant in Brussels, Belgium”, and it’s almost 16 minutes long. However, much of the video showed details of making the pasta sheets and preparing the filling — none of which was new to me. The one breakthrough was the section about forming the ravioli, using a pair of concentric hard plastic cookie cutters, so I have excerpted that portion — which is about 2 minutes long — to show you.

Rather than apply this technique for the first time with expensive lobster (which I did not have available), I chose instead to make a spinach and cheese ravioli with a simple classic tomato sauce. It was wonderful.

For the filling, I steamed a bunch of Small Farm young spinach leaves and mixed them with Kite Hill ricotta and whipped ricotta cheeses. The pasta sheets were made with 92 grams of Caputo “00” flour and one extra large egg, plus a little olive oil. And the tomato sauce was Marcella Hazan’s incomparable Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter.

Aaron’s Arizona Sangiovese was a lovely match.