Happy wedding anniversary ~ Part 1 ~ Dungeness Crab Ravioli

We celebrated our wedding anniversary this year with pasta! Last week Rob and I took a cooking class at Sur La Table about making homemade pasta, and afterwards we bought a pasta machine as a gift to each other. The traditional anniversary gift for 12 years of marriage is silk, so we thought making silky pasta would be fitting! 😉

We both love crab, so we made a Dungeness crab filling to go in our homemade ravioli. I found a good recipe on MarthaStewart.com to base our dish. I used lightened ricotta instead of the whole milk variety, and I used Earth Balance instead of butter for the sauce. We also used a little more crab than the recipe called for, since we love crab :). We replaced the wonton wrappers in her recipe with fresh pasta dough that we rolled and cut out. The recipe for the dough is on a previous entry that I wrote last spring, and it can be found here.

Crab Ravioli with Lemony Sauce

Based on a recipe from MarthaStewart.com

For the filling:

1 cup ricotta cheese

1 1/2 cups lump crabmeat, such as Dungeness

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

1/8 teaspoon red-pepper flakes

For the pasta:

Fresh Pasta Dough

Rice flour preferably, or the type of flour you used to make the dough (either all-purpose or 00)

For the sauce:

1 stick Earth Balance

2 teaspoons lemon peel, very finely chopped, plus 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Make the filling: Mix together ricotta, crabmeat, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, and the red-pepper flakes.

Make the ravioli: Cut your pasta sheets into squares with a pizza cutter, about 2 inches wide. Mound 1 teaspoon crab filling in the center of each hand cut piece of pasta. Brush edges of the pasta square with water, and top each with another square. Press edges to seal. Transfer to a baking sheet covered with rice flour (preferably) or the type of flour used to make the dough, and lightly dust the ravioli with the flour to keep them from sticking.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Working in 2 batches, cook ravioli until they rise to the top, 2 to 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the sauce: Melt 4 tablespoons Earth Balance in a large skillet over medium heat. Transfer first batch of cooked ravioli to the skillet using a slotted spoon, along with about 2 tablespoons cooking liquid. Add 1 teaspoon chopped lemon peel and 1 teaspoon juice, and swirl to combine. Transfer to plates.

Repeat with second batch of ravioli.

They sound like a lot of work, but when you have two people working together in the kitchen, they go surprisingly quickly. It’s a fun project! I hope you’ll give them a try :).