{"id":2518,"date":"2017-09-27T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=2518"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:59:15","slug":"moms-ravioli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2017\/09\/27\/moms-ravioli\/","title":{"rendered":"Mom’s Ravioli"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 27, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n

My strongest olfactory memory of childhood is gradually waking up on Sunday morning to the smell (perfume is a better characterization as far as I\u2019m concerned) of garlic being saut\u00e9ed in olive oil.<\/p>\n

That was how most Sundays started.<\/p>\n

My mother would get up early and start making her long-simmered Southern Italian Tomato Sauce (referred to as Ragu or Sugo if one\u2019s Italian roots were close, \u201cGravy\u201d if one grew up in New York or nearby, and often just \u201cSauce\u201d). We unceremoniously called it \u201cSpaghetti Sauce\u201d though it was used on much more than spaghetti!<\/p>\n

I think the better part of my culinary-cultural history is represented by that sauce. Every Italian family\u2019s sauce is different, even if stylistic similarities can be identified. The sauces made by my mother and her two sisters that I knew, Aunt Margie and Aunt Mamie, were clearly related but also different. Each was good but it\u2019s not as if they didn\u2019t deviate from my Grandmother\u2019s recipe. They were similar in that garlic and meat were browned in oil; tomato products, water, and seasonings were added; and the whole thing simmered for hours. The meats varied, the tomato products (tomato paste, tomato puree, whole canned tomatoes, etc.) and the proportions of them definitely varied as did the seasonings and other aromatics.<\/p>\n

My mother\u2019s \u201cSpaghetti Sauce\u201d to call it by its \u201chistoric\u201d name, a name that I no longer use, is, without doubt, my most precious culinary treasure. I have only ever given the recipe out twice. In the 1970\u2019s I gave it to John Bowker and his wife Margaret Roper Bowker. John was the dean of Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Recently I gave it to Robert Reddington and John O\u2019Malley in Palm Springs after Bob lamented the loss of the recipe for the long-simmered tomato sauce he learned to make while living in Chicago.<\/p>\n

With my mother\u2019s sauce as the near-constant backdrop to our Sunday dinners, the rest of the meal varied. The sauce could be served with spaghetti or some other cut of dry pasta, or with my mother\u2019s home-made fettuccine, or with ravioli. Although my favorite pasta is gnocchi, we never had those on Sundays as my father didn\u2019t like them. Gnocchi (always home-made) were reserved for a weeknight meal during the times that my father worked out of town.<\/p>\n

The sauce has an abundant amount of meat in it, pork, always cut in big pieces, never ground or chopped. Nonetheless, the pasta was often accompanied by my mother\u2019s slow-cooked roast pork or maybe a roast chicken.<\/p>\n

It seems incongruous now, but in the 1960s, before the widespread use of antibiotics, chickens were expensive! (I\u2019m not in favor of the prophylactic use of antibiotics but I\u2019m just saying that\u2019s why chickens are relatively inexpensive now.) I still have a handful of my mother\u2019s \u201cCity Chicken\u201d sticks from the 1960s. They are round, pointed sticks slimmer than a pencil but thicker than bamboo skewers. Pieces of pork and veal would be skewered in alternating fashion on the sticks, breaded, and fried like chicken drumsticks. This was less expensive than chicken!!<\/p>\n

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City Chicken sticks<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But back to Sundays\u2026<\/p>\n

Sometimes, after the sauce was bubbling away, my mother would make ravioli. Next to gnocchi, they are my favorite pasta, but manicotti and lasagna aren\u2019t far behind.<\/p>\n

We would eat our big meal around 1 PM on Sunday and my mother would get all of this done in time for that meal, including taking time to go to church, during which my Aunt Mamie, who lived upstairs, would be tasked with stirring the \u201cSpaghetti Sauce.\u201d<\/p>\n

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My mother’s (now my) ravioli mold.<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Making ravioli in a group is a lot more fun. I also find that making the ravioli on a different day from the day they are cooked and eaten means that I am not as tired and I enjoy them more. The pictures in this post are from a Sunday when I got together with Rich DePippo, Susan Vinci-Lucero, and my in-laws, Marisa and Frank Pieri, to make ravioli. I think we made about 30 dozen ravioli!<\/p>\n

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Mom's Ravioli<\/h2>\n
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The filling can be made a day in advance and refrigerated, tightly covered. Ravioli freeze well. To do so, lightly flour a sheet pan that will fit in your freezer and put the ravioli in a single layer. Freeze about 30-45 minutes, until firm. Quickly put the ravioli in a zipper-lock bag and return to the freezer. Repeat with the remaining ravioli. My mother always made her dough by hand but I use a kitchen mixer and the beater, not the dough hook. Years ago, ground meat was not labeled with the percent fat. My mother would select a cut of sirloin, have the butcher trim off all visible fat and then grind it. I find that 93% lean ground beef replicates the experience.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span> 30 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>8<\/span> people<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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