Finished Ravioli

Beyond Meat has hit it out of the park with their new vegan Italian sausages, the flavor and texture are spot on.  Technically, Whole Foods carries them but the demand is crazy and they are out of stock more often than they are available on the shelves.  Rumor has it that Beyond Meat is opening an additional factory to keep up with demand.  I prefer the Impossible Burger to the Beyond Burger, but the Beyond Sausages are the best veggie sausage on the market.

I decide to try making a ravioli out of their Hot Italian sausage and some pesto.  The ravioli filling came out amazing and was utterly convincing, but the short cut/cheat I tried by using store bought wonton wrappers did not work so well.

The Vegan Pesto Recipe is based on the one at Food52:

1. 2 cups roughly chopped fresh basil.
2. 1/2 cup pine nuts.
3. 1/4 cup macadamia nuts
4. 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped.
5. 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil.
6. sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.
7. 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
8. 3 1/2 tablespoons nutritional yeast.

Place the ingredients in a food processors or good blender and pulse until the ingredients are coarsely ground and combined.

Remove the Italian sausage from its casing. (As an aside roll some of the sausage filling into a ball, dust lightly with flour and pan fry to make some tasty meat balls)

Wonton Wrapper Cheat (doesn’t work great)

Vegan Italian Sausage and Pesto ravioli/wonton

I tried cheating and rather than making my own dough I tried using store bought wonton wrappers.  I put about one table spoon of Italian Sausage and two teaspoons of pesto on a round wonton wrapper and laid a second wonton wrapper on top.  I then moistened the edges and crimped the edges tightly closed with a fork.  The filling turned out to be amazing, the perfect pesto and sausage ravioli filling, but the wonton wrapper cheat didn’t work out so well.  The wonton wrappers were too thin to provide the right texture and I essentially made pesto and Italian Sausage wontons, but really excellent wontons.

Do it the right way and don’t slack on the dough.  Here are ravioli dough instructions from an earlier recipe.

Dough: 

4 cups of white flour
4 tablespoons of olive oil
4 pinches of salt
1 cup of water.

Put the flour and salt in a mixer and mix to distribute the salt through the flour; I use a Kitchen Aid with the dough hook attachment. Add the olive oil and then slowly add the water. A ball of dough will then quickly form.

Use a pasta maker to roll out the dough, I use a Imperia hand cranked pasta maker. I originally followed the instructions that came with the maker, but found that the settings in the instructions created too thin a sheet of dough. I recommend using a slightly thicker setting on the pasta maker.

Lay a sheet of pasta on a clean surface and place balls of filling, about 1 inch in diameter, on the dough. Leave enough space between the balls of filling so that you can seal the dough around the filling. Lay a second sheet of pasta on top of the first, sandwiching the balls of filling. Use a pastry crimper/sealer to cut and crimp the dough to make the ravioli.