Sweet Corn Ravioli

So……a week or two ago I was watching The Mentalist and Patrick Jane said something about how delicious sweet corn ravioli with a white wine sauce was and well, that was it. I’ve been obsessing about making it ever since. I found a few recipes on the internet but none were exactly to my liking. Most had shrimp in them and I’m allergic to seafood so I looked over the recipes, took a bit from each, and made my own. It could use a little tweaking – mostly in the procedure – but it was really quite tasty.

Combine:

1 can of sweet corn (about 12 oz.) – most recipes called for corn taken off the cob but it’s not in season right now

1/2 cup ricotta

1/2 cup mascarpone

1 tsp. lemon pepper

a pinch of nutmeg

(Note: I think it would have been good to chop up or run the corn through the blender for a second just to make it slightly smaller. It tasted great the way it was but the large kernels had a tendency to pop out of the ravioli).

Beat 1 egg with a bit of water to make an egg wash (about a teaspoon will do).

Lay out 24 egg roll wrappers – I used the square ones because that’s what they had at my store but the round ones should work fine too. Place some of the filling onto each of the wrappers. Most recipes called for 1 T. of filling but I adjusted that because I found that it was too much. It would ooze out of the ravioli as they cooked. I found that about 2 tsp. worked much better. Some of the recipes used plain water as the “glue” for holding the ravioli closed. I tried that and the egg wash and found the egg wash worked better. I brushed another 24 of the egg roll wrappers with some of the egg wash and then laid those, egg side down onto each of the raviolis with filling on them. I found it was very important to seal these really well or I lost most of the filling in the pot of water.

First, I used my finger to go around the edges of each of the ravioli, pressing down to create as good a seal as I could. Then I went around each one with a fork, like you would for the edge of a pie crust. Again, I pressed well to get a good seal. None of the recipes said anything about letting the ravioli “rest” but I found that the ones that had been sitting for a bit worked better than the ones that were popped into the cooking water the moment they were formed. They hardened up a bit and that seemed to help form a better seal on them. To cook the ravioli, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop a few ravioli at a time into the boiling water. Don’t overcrowd the pot – you need to cook these in stages. When the ravioli floats, it’s done. The recipes said this would take 3-5 minutes but I found that 3 minutes was even too long and they would overcook and sometimes burst if left that long. I watched them closely and the moment they floated, I took them out of the pot – this only took about 2 minutes.

For the sauce, I sauteed about 1/3 cup of chopped shallots in some butter. You could easily adjust this and make more or less onions as to your liking. Next time, I’ll make a mire pois (mixture of minced onions, carrots, and celery that is sauteed together) and try that because I think it would add a lot of flavour to the sauce. I think some fresh garlic added to this would be really delicious too. Once the shallots were sauteed, I added about 2 cups of heavy cream and 1/2 cup white wine to the pot. I let this cook until it had reduced and thickened up and then I seasoned it with some rosemary and basil.