What a week it’s been! I hope you had a wonderful and relaxing holiday weekend, like we did.

It’s time to get back to blogging about one of my most favorite adventures: cooking.

I grew up watching my parents cook and sneaking tastes here and there but never really had much opportunity to cook for myself. During college I lived in a sorority and when my meals weren’t cooked by our chef, they were provided by Pizza Ragazzi. Everyone was so worried about me cooking for myself that my college boyfriend even got me a cookbook when I graduated: “Help! My apartment has a kitchen!”  Thankfully I was able to soak up a lot more than everyone thought while I was watching cooking happen and fared pretty well for myself. Since then I’ve become quite the chef and married quite the chef, making dinner at our house a delicious production.

Over the years I’ve had some fun with my cooking. In 2011, I took a photo of my dinner each night and posted it to Facebook. This was two-fold. My day job deals with social media and this helped me familiarize myself with their ongoing changes, and it helped me eat more well-balanced dinners. I was amazed how critical my friends are of my meals and by how much pizza we ate over the year.

In 2012, we chose an ingredient each week to ‘feature’ in our meals. It was surprisingly fun and challenging and I discovered some great recipe databases. What is my most favorite database? Williams-Sonoma, hands down. We had at least one Williams-Sonoma-inspired meal each week and only came across two so-so recipes. I highly recommend you check it out! Our other favorites include: Cooking Light, Smitten Kitchen, Whole Foods and PCC.

Our most adventurous meals seem to involve pasta. We received the Kitchen Aid pasta attachments for the wedding and we love making pasta from scratch. (We recently even made some gluten free pasta that I’ll share soon…) We’ve made black-pepper fettuccine, beet lasagna (with pink noodles!) and our most favorite: pear, prosciutto and pecorino ravioli.  Since it is our favorite, here are instructions on how to make it.  If this is your first time making ravioli, be sure to give yourself all afternoon to complete.

Here is our Pear, Prosciutto and Pecorino ravioli recipe: (adapted from Williams-Sonoma)

Filling

• 1 lb. Bartlett pears chunks (slightly under-ripe, we kept the skins on)
• 8 oz. Pecorino Toscano cheese
• 10 slices of prosciutto
• 1/2 c. rosemary pecorino
• Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Put all ingredients in the blender and blend into small chopped chunks. Strain this mix to remove any excess water.

Pasta (also from Williams-Sonoma! Who would’ve guessed!?)

• 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup semolina flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 Tbs. olive oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 Tbs. water, plus more as needed

Follow the Williams-Sonoma recipe. We simplify it a bit: mix them all together and then let them sit for 20 minutes. Add extra water if necessary. Then run it through the Kitchen Aid roller attachment, getting it down to 4 or 5, thin, but not too thin.

Raviolis

Take the rolled out pasta and plunk down a spoonful of the filling. Each ravioli will be about two inches across. We put down about four plunks of filling across the pasta sheet and then folded the other side over on to the filling (example in above photo). We then wetted the edges (like glue) and used a fork to crimp them together. Continue until all of the filling and pasta are used up.

Put on a pot of water to boil. Also brown 3 tablespoons of butter in a little fry pan. Simmer this until while the raviolis cook.

Once the raviolis are done, throw them in a pot of boiling water for three minutes — just long enough to melt the cheese and cook the pasta. Coat the raviolis in the browned butter and serve! Keep doing this in batches until the raviolis are complete. Add delicious optional toppings of toasted hazelnuts or parsley to add to it! And enjoy!!

Check back here often for more recipes!