Spinach Avocado Ravioli

Spinach Avocado Ravioli

Ravioli! Something we’ve rarely these years and decided though it’s time consuming we’d make our own.

For the pasta pastry, we used the pastry recipe here:

http://goveganmeow.blogspot.com/2011/02/spinach-and-mushroom-ravioli.html

As most vegan ravioli recipes focussed around using something to substitute the ‘cheese’, such as tofu, cashew nuts, or vegan cheese we thought it easier to make our own filling.

For the filling,we used:

-        1 bag spinach, watercress and rocket

-        1 can red kidney beans, mashed

-        1 avocado

-        1/2 a green peper and 1/2 a red one (though it doesn’t really matter)

-        1 courgette

-        1 onion

-        Garlic, to taste (Conor loves his garlic, so probably 5-6 cloves)

-        Basil, pepper, oregano, thyme

For the sauce (a standard tomato type sauce):

- Can of chopped tomatoes and few tablespoons tomato puree (to taste)

- 1 onion

- Garlic to taste

- More herbs etc: basil, pepper, oregano

1. We chopped everything up and started with frying the onion. To this we added the courgette, avocado and pepper.
2. When all this was soft enough (as it’d be put into little ravioli parcels), we added the mashed kidney beans and garlic. Finally the spinach, watercress and rocket and seasonings.
3. We cooked all this until it was very soft and mushy enough to be made into balls to be put into the pastry. 
4. For the pastry, we placed the balls on the pastry sheet (which we had divided into two). We then overlay the second half of the pastry sheet over this and cut into squares around the balls of filling. The edges of these we then flattened with a fork to give a nice design.
5. When all was done we plopped the ravioli one by one into a pot of boiling water, boiling for about 10minutes and stirring gently. We then drained the pot and put them on a plate, adding some tomato sauce.

There are two things we found really made this recipe: the avocado and the rocket. The avocado gave a lovely creamyness to the ravioli and if doing this recipe again we’d use more and cream the avocado first (adding it last so). The rocket was a good idea too – the shop had been sold out of plain bags of spinach so we had to settle on a mixed bag of spinach, watercress and rocket and this turned out to be so lucky in the end. Rocket has a rather strong flavour comparable (I thought) with blue cheese. I would perhaps use a bit less next time, though it really added an edge to the recipe.