February 18, 2016 New Recipe – Duck and Ricotta Filled Ravioli with Asparagus

February 18, 2016 New Recipe – Duck and Ricotta Filled Ravioli with Asparagus

I ate PPI lax and Cream Cheese sandwiches and Chicken Liver sandwiches for Breakfast.

Lunch was equally uninteresting, PPI Posole with red chile enchilada.

I had a duck confit, tomato, and red onion salad at 5:15 in anticipation of going to the Los Lunas Council meeting, when Aaron called and told me the meeting was actually later and he would go without me.  So instead of not being at home for dinner, I was at home all evening.

My stomach was feeling a bit unsettled from the leftover food, so at 5:30 I went to bed to read my Book Club selection for this month, The Longest Road by Phil Caputo.  At a little after 6:00 Suzette arrived and said she was going to make pasta for ravioli.  I got up and went to the kitchen and Suzette had dinner well under way.  

Duck Confit Ravioli with red wine cream sauce

Suzette mixed a cup of the Italian Ricotta cheese I bought at Albertson’s the other day with a couple of cups of shredded duck confit left from Sunday’s meal, 1/2 cup of Reggiano Romano cheese and  in 1 tsp. of herbs Provence salt and puréed the mixture in the Cuisinart to bind it.

    Crimping the raviolis beside the duck confit and ricotta and pecorino filling

Suzette got the Italian pasta machine from the basement and made a recipe of pasta dough in the Cuisinart and rolled it in the pasta machine into two long sheets.  We used a biscuit cutter to make rounds of pasta, we then spooned a heaping tsp. of the duck mixture onto a pasta round and wet the edge around the stuffing with water and placed another round of pasta on top and crimped the edges together with the tines of a fork.   We let the raviolis dry a bit on a floured surface.  Then we addressed the sauce issue.  We decided to utilize the PPI sauce we made for Sunday night’s meal.  We added a bit of champagne to lighten the sauce.  I also grated and chopped another 1/4 cup of Reggiano Romano cheese to garnish the dish.

    The formed and drying raviolis

    The red wine cream sauce

  The roasted beets and turnips

Then we steamed a handful of asparagus.  I fetched a bottle of 2010 Lionello Marchesi Castello di Monastero Chianti Superiore because it has a lightness that would complement the delicate flavors of the ricotta and duck stuffing and fresh pasta  (I bought the wine as a close out two years ago at Christmas at Quarters, after Barry and Kylene served it at their Christmas party which Connie attended and recommended the wine.  It has aged beautifully) I opened and poured glasses of wine and Suzette plated the dishes with a puddle of the red wine cream sauce on the bottom, then the fresh boiled ravioli, then some PPI roasted beets and turnips from our garden, and finally some of the chopped grated Peccorino Romano cheese.

  

We had made ourselves a lovely light dinner: one that was as elegant as any of the dishes we made on Sunday.  I was cured from the bad food of the day by great food.  Suzette had made a new recipe worthy of repeating, again and again.

I have recently realized there are two kinds of wine and there are two kinds of wine drinkers.  There are those wines that are made in bulk and have no lasting capability that are best drunk young because they will not age well.  These are usually wines made with grapes grown in multiple vineyards in volume.  Then there are the vineyards that make wines from a single vineyard where they reduce production of the grapes by stressing the vines by either not irrigating or growing the vines on rocky limestone hillsides.  These grapes usually have lots of tannin and are slightly bitter when they are young but age beautifully.  They are also made with great care and blended by master wine makers and aged in oak barrels for years to bring them to maturity.  These are the expensive wines that can and should be stored for a long time, like the great pinot Noirs of Burgundy.  We tasted several 2000's at Taos this year that tasted wonderful, for example.

I went back to bed to read my book until I was called by Martin at around 9:00 to tell me that the Village of Los Lunas had agreed to purchase the land we are developing.  This is the first land development I have been involved in where I am an active principal in the deal.  We still have a long way to go, but the path to a successful development is open to everyone to succeed.  It feels wonderful. Thanks to Martin and Aaron for inviting me to join their development team.

I got out of bed and told Suzette the good news and ate a bowl of chocolate ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup.  

I went to bed around  10:00 and slept until 1:30 and watched “The Beach” in its entirety until 4:00 and went back to bed.  The last frames of “the Beach” shows a picture of the group of tourists who lived together on a remote island in Thailand together for several years with the words “parallel Universe” several months after they all were forced to leave the island by the native pot growers.  It is a complicated story line, but Leonard DiCaprio is wonderful in it and it is a great movie.

It made me realize that the difference between success and failure is often in our perception, in other words, in our mind. 

Bon Appetit