Last night we made pasta, and somehow the innocent piece of dough, no bigger than an apple stretched itself into a veritable river; by the time it was through the machine, I had nearly the whole class holding it up like the never ending Lady Diana’s veil. Unfortunately, I started to laugh, and I couldn’t stop myself in time to remember to flour the board before the pasta went down, and so long strips of noodle became a lovely decoration on our table instead of dinner. We made an unbelievably delicious filling of fresh sheep’s milk ricotta, fresh fave, a little parmesan, garlic, fresh thyme and basil, and when we realized that half of our pasta was never going to make it to the pot, we stole back the filling that we had ever so carefully placed along the the strips for the ravioli, and instead spread it on bruschetta and snacked until the rest of dinner (successfully) made it to the table.
Even with our loss, there were still enough ravioli to go around for the first course, and the combination of the fave singing notes of Spring and the sheep’s milk ricotta the perfect foil wrapped in paper thin pockets of dough made the whole thing entirably worthwhile. The sauce was a glaze of cream that was reduced with a garlic clove and a sprig of fresh thyme. The rest is a blur, but I remember people licking their plates.