For some reason, this week I find myself with a surplus of ravioli: lobster-shrimp ravioli, spinach ravioli, and plain cheese ravioli. So the other night I came home and decided to make the lobster-shrimp variety. Now my favorite sauce with a lobster ravioli is a decadent one typically a tomato-cream sauce, or a brandy-cream sauce, or really any type of cream sauce. But good news for my arteries I had no cream in the house. So I had to go to Plan B. Rich is perfectly happy with homemade marinara, and I happened to have some in the fridge, so he was all set. But I'm not so keen on seafood with marinara, so I hopped onto foodnetwork.com to see what my favorite tv chefs do with their ravioli.
After scrolling through a few pages of search results, I had a contender: Giada De Laurentiis's recipe for Ravioli with Balsamic Brown Butter. As luck would have it, that very day I'd brought home a bottle of aged balsamic vinegar from Fig & Olive. It was pricier than the stuff I get at the grocery store to make salad dressing, but thick and sweet and flavorful and perfectly suited for this recipe. So I set the pasta to boil, microwaved the marinara sauce, and set about browning my butter in a saucepan. That was easy (the biggest trick with browning butter is to do it on not-too-high a heat, and watch it so it doesn't burn). But as everything cooked I realized there was no vegetable in my meal (Rich claimed his tomato sauce was veg enough for him). So I grabbed a large handful of frozen peas and tossed them into the boiling water. They'd be my green.
It all came together quite nicely. I drained his ravioli, plated it, and let him add his own marinara. Then I dumped my drained ravioli and peas into the brown-butter balsamic saucepan, gave it a few stirs so the little guys were evenly coated with the nutty, sweet sauce, then turned them out onto my plate. I topped them with a small handful of toasted chopped walnuts, and took a big bite. Yumm! Definitely a recipe worth making again.
Oh, and lest you think I consumed a half a stick of butter with that meal, fear not. Most of the balsamic-brown butter sauce was left in the pan, so I poured it into a mini container and saved it for the next night's salmon fillets!
Posted by Melanie
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