No Rest for the Wicked

Today was really hot in Pittsburgh, almost too hot for cooking. I didn't let that stop me, although I might be experimenting with raw foods in August, if the temperatures get much higher. Anyone out there have any favorite raw food dishes? I'm partial to cooked food, but admit I'm curious about the raw food movement. 

 

Anyway, this morning I woke up late and immediately went to the kitchen. I can't let my sleeping in interfere with our tradition of a semi-lavish Sunday morning breakfast. There's something really soothing about sitting down to a plate of warm goodies and watching public television with the husband!

I had an extra container of firm tofu in the refrigerator, so decided to make a nice tofu scramble.. I always follow the recipe in Vegan Brunch pretty closely, because I think the spice combination is perfection. Today I added a cup of sliced white mushrooms, a handful of kalamata olives, and half a diced onion. I also toasted a few pieces of rye bread.

I had every intention of making the Pumpkin Spinach Ravioli from 500 Vegan Recipes, but couldn't find any pumpkin puree. Silly me for wanting pumpkin in the summertime! I decided to improvise with a spinach, mushroom, and butternut squash mixture.

Working with semolina flour was pretty challenging. I'd never made any pasta from scratch before, and had the hardest time with the sticky quality of the semolina flour. It kept sticking to the rolling pin, and I ended up adding a crapload of additional flour just to be able to roll it out into a semi-circle. I also think I need more practice with rolling dough out, because I couldn't get it anywhere near as thin as it should be. I've since found these instructions, which I will follow the next time I make homemade ravioli. I also found this recipe, which calls for a mixture of either wheat flour or white flour, and chickpea flour. I'm guessing this might make the dough less sticky. Oh, and this recipe, for heart-shaped ravioli. Super cute.

So my ravioli was a little thicker than they should have been (okay, a lot thicker), which meant there was less room for the filling, but I thought they had a lot of promise. J thought so too.

Here's a pic of the ravioli, nekkid.

And here they are, mixed up with some of the extra filling and a few spoonfuls of extra marinara sauce we had lying around (Nana's Heirloom Roasted Red Pepper). By the way, I think the tomato sauce from Veganomicon's Pasta E Fagioli would be awesome on ravioli. Next time.

J is a pasta purist, so ate his with a drizzle of olive oil and Italian seasoning.

I was exhausted after the semolina challenge, so didn't do my normal manic cooking-for-the-week routine. I did make a pot of vegetable stock, but that's it.