Nothing says special occasion like ravioli! You see, as a young lad, standard dry pasta shapes like penne, linguine, and rigatoni, made their way to my mother's dinner table about 1x-2x per week. However, whenever the regal ravioli made an appearance for lunch we knew it was a special day.
Ravioli were reserved for holidays or a special occasion such as a birthday or relative flying in from Italy. My mother often purchased Ravioli from a mom and pop shop in town that specialized in pasta or, if we were in luck, our Genoese born neighbor Amelia would offer her hand made spinach ravioli stuffed with homemade ricotta.
I recently cooked up a batch of cheese ravioli from a local pasta company called Vitamia for the Scordo Pasta Challenge (hey, the Challenge is a special occasion!) and served the pasta with a mushroom (shitake) tomato sauce and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Three cheers to the king of pasta - the mighty ravioli!
Italian
