Fresh Pasta

The recent pasta posts by BabeKL and S-Kay had me hankering for pasta too. With the thoughts of pasta on the mind, I tried to leave work earlier only to be caught in a freakingly terrible jam! Crawling at an ant's pace in the 11/2 hour jam it took me to get home only made me hungrier and visions of hot steaming pasta dancing across my mind didn't help matters!

Thank goodness pasta is quick and easy to prepare! I got home, chopped up some garlic, washed up some oyster mushrooms (Bro said this is the first time he had seen people eat pasta with oyster mushrooms!), got out the pasta and Prego sauce and we were all set to go!

I love fresh pasta so the menu tonight was Latina's Chicken and Mushroom ravioli

The ravioli was cooked in boiling water kept at a rolling boil with a pinch of salt before it was "shocked" with cool water to stop the cooking process. While the pasta was cooking, we prepped the easy sauce - A quick task of sauteing the chopped garlic in olive oil, cooking the mushrooms and adding the sauce to the mixture. We normally add black pepper, salt and additional Italian herbs and basil to the sauce as we find the commercial sauces a little bland at times. And in approximately 15 minutes, dinner was ready!

Voila! Chicken and mushroom ravioli with a fragrant and robust tomato and mushroom sauce (Foodcrazee, can pass for a menu description?!)

Finally, my pasta vision brought to life! The ravioli were lovely little parcels of pasta surrounding a tasty mixture of chicken and mushroom and the tomato sauce was robust yet light enough as not to drown the flavours of the ravioli. A very satisfying meal which made up for my cramped leg resulting from driving a manual car in the jam!

Note to self: There's probably a reason why people don't use oyster mushrooms in a pasta sauce! They produce so much water when cooking that we had to boil it down before adding the sauce so it wouldn't be too diluted!