our thanksgiving tradition

the spinach, ricotta, and feta ravioli

i've been late with this post as i've been with so many others, and have been kicking around the idea that this blog will become ineffectual if i continue to "phone it in", which is, to be honest, all that i've been able to do lately. losing track of time is not what i consider fun. so delving into the whys and wherefores is going to be messy and that's coming in the next entry. for now, let's enjoy the fruits of last weekend's labor.

in our family, ravioli is the king of thanksgiving foods. there are the annual standards, like nonna's piemontese beef and spinach ravioli, most closely resembling agnolotti in taste and style.  variations on ricotta ravioli are also pretty typical.

and then there are the experiments. don't get me wrong, every recipe we've come up with or replicated has been delicious and totally edible... but they are not traditional ravioli.

our aunts and mothers gathered together for years before we were born to roll and stuff and boil the little ravioli for ther holidays, taking up the pasta-making mantle from our nonna and her mother, serafina, who came from alessandria with her husband eugenio and son enrico.  nonna was born in the house that all of my cousins and i essentially grew in, with its perfectly square plot.  (remembering that house and our time there is worth its own post.)

since nonna wasn't keen to pass on the piemontese dialect to her children  - the push for her to "assimilate" into the american mono-culture was strong when she grew up in the 20s and 30s -  we did not have many ties to italy growing up, nor did we really know anything about hungary except for the ghoulash, pierogies, and kifli we ate during the holiday season.  these food traditions became the doorway for me to explore the many (often disagreeable) facets of italian cultures, and i think that they played a huge part in my interest in learning the language and traveling to italy in college.

val's plugging away with the pasta roller

for ravioli this year, we scaled down. val and nettie cranked out over a thousand of nonna's ravioli on their own in mid-october, which is truly impressive. as for round two, though there weren't too many cousins around to help, our well-oiled pasta-making assembly line functioned with incredible efficiency. this is usually the case when everyone knows exactly what his or her job is and isn't afraid to mix it up every hour or so. the five of us (val, kal, jill, chris, and me) took to the doughing, rolling, filling, and boiling stations in shifts. boiling is no one's favorite job.

jill and chris made a really delicious feta, ricotta, and spinach filling with a sage cream sauce.  

i made a corn and poblano filling with an onion-based cream sauce with some mm mm good vermouth. (it didn't burn off completely, tbh.)

we'll have to see what the verdict is on thanksgiving, which, i can't believe, is less than a week away.  before you know it, it'll be move-in day and then christmas in our first place.  time continues to fly.

this week's project (in-progress):  smile at 10 people.  just generally be kind to others and to myself.