Artichoke Lamb Ravioli

Besides my new love of puff pastry, I am also in love with wonton wrappers. Oh, I still dream of making my own pasta using the Kitchen Aid attachment, but until that day comes, wonton wrappers are an excellent compromise. They are easy to work with and they make wonderful ravioli. So when I saw this delicious looking recipe (the original includes a recipe for homemade ravioli), I thought, wonton wrappers!

The original recipe is vegetarian and does not include lamb. I was going to make it that way too after convincing the Resident Frenchman that we could eat vegetarian for the night and probably survive, but then! Then I fell into a Ziploc commercial. A few weeks ago, I bought some ground lamb and froze a half pound of it. Instead of just tossing it into the freezer, I carefully labeled the bag with the date and that it was a half pound of lamb. So when I opened the freezer, I saw the bag staring at me, saying use me because I am perfectly labeled! I think I remember a Ziploc commercial like this. I was powerless to resist the labeled bag and so lamb went into the ravioli. It was a great addition – it went really well with the artichokes and added a lot of flavor to the dish.

The original recipe also called for frozen artichokes, which I could not find at neither Pathmark nor Whole Foods. Which made me wonder, where exactly are these sold? I substituted two jars of artichokes, which worked well, but I imagine the frozen ones are probably cheaper. So I am going to keep looking, maybe Trader Joe’s has them? Either way, artichokes are delicious and I really need to incorporate them more into my cooking.

The dish tasted absolutely delicious and is long gone as of this posting. Which is really sad because now I am dying for some more after writing all this!

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Pasta Carbonara

There is a lot of discussion as to what is a true carbonara. Personally, I do not have a strong opinion on this, but the Internets tell me there are plenty of people who do. I am not committing the cardinal sin of using cream but I’m sure my use of bacon instead of pancetta will bother purists. But this is not a classic Italian food blog, it is a good food blog and this is good. Fantastic really. If you like bacon, then this is the recipe for you. The onions taste like bacon, the pasta tastes like bacon and oh, there is a pound of bacon mixed in. If you are going to go this far with bacon, you might as well as go really far. The alternate name for this recipe is Bacon Pasta. So if you are a vegetarian or are kosher, I’m sorry.

A few notes:

• This is not a low calorie recipe.  Do not purchase center cut bacon or a similarly low fat bacon.  You need the bacon to render a good amount here and center cut is not going to cut it (heh).
• I used homemade chicken stock for this once.  It was out of this world.  It adds a tremendous depth and richness.  So beware, once you go homemade, it is hard to go back.
• Make sure you shred the Parmesan or purchase shredded Parmesan. Do not grate.  Shredded melts and melds better.
• This uses raw eggs. They are cooked by the warm pasta and onion/bacon mixture and they are safe for eating. But if you are squeamish about this, then this is not the recipe for you.

I know I say this all the time, but this is so good. Ridiculously good. Bacon+pasta+Parmesan=delicious. Make it!

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