How Maine Inspired Italy

Oh lobster, how we love you (and by we, we mean at least ½ of TCC’s team). When K2’s dad asked us if we could use lobster in the menu (translation, I want lobster, so fit it in), we both immediately thought about doing a Lobster Ravioli. After a few brainstorming sessions we came up with the final dish, lobster ravioli in a browned butter sauce.

Lobster Filling:

1 large shallot, minced
1 Tbsp. white wine
olive oil
8 oz. cooked lobster meat, roughly chopped (you can substitute any cooked shellfish)
8 oz marscarpone (you can also substitute ricotta)
1 tsp. brandy
½ tsp. lemon juice
¼ tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. ground bay leaf
zest from ½ lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Drizzle a small amount of olive oil into a pan, sauté shallot until you see it just starting to caramelize (low heat). Once it’s starting turning a slight brown, add in your white wine to deglaze. Put the mixture into the fridge to cool it slightly.

In the meantime, combine lobster meat, cheese, brandy and lemon juice. Add in nutmeg, ground bay leaf, lemon zest, and cooled shallot. Spice to taste with salt and pepper.

Refrigerate the filling until you're ready to fill your ravioli.

For the ravioli, if you’re motivated (and we were), you can make your own pasta. The recipe for pasta is fairly simple, semolina, flour, eggs, water, and a touch of olive oil. We did learn that the semolina (00 preferably) was the key to making a nice dough. We got our recipe from allrecipes.com. The recipe made enough for about 2 dozen – 2 inch ravioli.

If you’re not motivated to make your own dough, you can use wonton wrappers. It doesn’t have the same freshness, but it works, and it’s still pretty darn tasty!

Back to homemade dough. We found that when rolling, we opted to roll to a “5” thickness on the pasta machine (our machine went to 6). Because the filling was fairly substantial we wanted a thicker pasta.

Making the ravioli:

After rolling we shortcutted the process by laying out the sheet and created 4-6 ravioli based on the length of the sheet. You’ll have to eyeball to assess how many ravioli you can get out of each sheet.

Place ½-1 Tbsp. filling for each ravioli (depending on the size you choose to make) on ½ of the sheet of pasta (check out the picture to see what we mean). Leave adequate space between your fillings, so you can crimp the edges.

Wet the edges of your pasta sheet(either with water or an egg wash). Wet the edges between the filling as well. Fold over the filling, pressing the edges and between the ravioli, crimping the sides. Make sure when you’re crimping you’re sealing really well so you don’t lose any lobster filling.

Cut between each bit of filling, and crimp the newly cut sides. Tah Dah, ravioli!!

Fresh pasta cooks slightly faster than dried pasta and will vary, but this will give you a good idea of when to take it out of the water.  Place your ravioli into boiling water, once it starts to float give it another 3 or 4 minutes more. You can always take one out and eat it to test its doneness.

Browned butter sauce:

1 stick butter

1 tsp. lemon juice

1 Tbsp. white wine.

Melt butter in a pan, keep the heat on low and let the butter continue to ‘cook’. Eventually you will start to see it turning brown, go ahead and take it off the heat.

Mix in your lemon juice and white wine. Pour this over your cooked ravioli, sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley and toasted pine nuts. To make the dish extra special, add a few pieces of cooked lobster meat on top.

We topped ours with a small sprinkling of grated Fiore Sardo (smoky sheep’s cheese)… YUM!!!

Notes:


- if you have any cooked lobster meat leftover and want to freeze it for later, put it in a freezer bag with milk (about 1 tsp per 1/2 lb of meat), remove the excess air and put it in the freezer. The milk keeps in the flavor of the lobster and keeps out the freezer taste.


- The lobster filling recipe makes quite a lot. If you find you have leftovers use it in omelettes, on top of nachos, mix it with some milk or cream and make a rich pasta sauce.

(fun with pre rolled pasta dough)