Andrew's Wiki
Chocolate Dough
From time to time, the Shawna and Andrew Test Kitchen truly reflects its name, and Andrew and I collaborate on a project. The past Pierogie Magic dough was a good example, and so is this one—chocolate ravioli for Andrew’s braised beef-filled chocolate ravioli with pea and golden raisin sauces. Apparently, he’s involved in some kind of molecular gastronomy challenge concerning this combo (beef and chocolate). He made the golden raisin sauce a few days in advance (fabulous!), recently finished the pea sauce (who doesn’t love xanthan gum? especially the food processor!):
Now, he’s braising the beef, and we’re ready for the final (test) stages.
He’s taking the dough recipe from Eric Ripert’s chocolate ravioli (found here at Epicurious). First, of course, we set out the ingredients: 1-1/2 c flour, 3 tbs sugar, pinch salt, and 1/4 c cocoa sifted together into a large bowl, then whisked to combine evenly; and 3 eggs:
I made a little well in the sifted dry ingredients, dumped in the eggs, and then used a fork to “whisk” some of the dry ingredients into the egg, little by little. Instead of mashing the egg into the dry ingredients, I used the centrifugal force (the whirling-ness) of the egg to “grab” a small layer of dry ingredients at a time.
At first, the eggs refused to incorporate (they were too cold, and we should have left out the eggs to reach room temperature):
Soon, I had a smooth, brownie-like batter:
Of course, I had to keep going at it carefully, slowly and surely, as the yolk more and more begrudgingly incorporated the dry ingredients (just mashing the dry ingredients with the egg yolks would have yielded a very lumpy dough):
At this point, I had dough and had to forgo the fork in favor of a spoon (the fork kept tearing the dough). Clearly, the dough did not have enough flour in it, so I sprinkled some in the bowl until, at length, I had dough I could knead:
Because I had unintentionally kneaded the dough a little (by adding the extra flour), I reduced the kneading time (about 2 minutes’ kneading out of the bowl) and very soon had a nice looking lump of chocolatey dough—just the color of mashed Oreos.
We let it rest in the refrigerator while the beef finished braising (which turned out to last about two and a half hours), wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and then set inside a tightly-sealed plastic bag. Once we were ready to go (when Andrew had the filling ready), I covered the work surface with flour, took out the rolling pin, and used my Santoku to quarter the dough evenly. This dough was particularly sticky and needed constant additions of flour. (Any excess flour was wiped off the ravioli right before boiling.)
Step one: Roll dough into a rectangle (about 10” by 4”). Make sure that you have plenty of flour incorporated at this step. No shiny, dark brown dough should show through, as it should all have a thin layer of flour over it (don’t forget the bottom!)
Step two: Place three to four mounds of filling (each mound should be 1-2 tsp of filling, depending on how meat-filled you prefer your ravioli to be) evenly across the rectangle. (Keep in mind that the dough will be folded over itself to create the top layer of ravioli, so you need to place the dough ball not in the middle of the rectangle, but rather towards the right side.)
Step three: Brush the dough lightly but evenly with water (do not overwater! the dough will break!), especially where the “seams” of the ravioli will be:
Step four: Fold over the dough so that the edges of the long sides touch. Careful: fold over slowly so you have time to force out any extra air that would otherwise become trapped between the two layers (use your middle fingers to push down the dough layers onto each other gradually, starting at the middle seam and ending at the outermost edges of the dough). (In our case, I didn’t realize until it was too late that you needed to force the air out before you pressed the layers completely together. Consequently, I had to force the air out by popping the air bubbles. Where the dough popped was left a torn bit of dough, or (more often) a patch of dough that was so thin it gradually tore in two. I spent more time patching up these holes than any other step in the process!)
Step five: Take your 3” or 4” cookie cutter and cut the ravioli out. You don’t want to cut out the edge that was made when you folded the dough over (the folded part, then, not the part you had to press together). In other words, only 3/4 of the cookie cutter will actually touch the dough. Rotate the cutter in place with a circular motion, not letting it move position on the counter, to free the dough from the cutter. If the dough tends to stick, dip the cookie cutter in flour before you cut.
Step six: Flatten the edges of the ravioli with your fingers to ensure a tight seam (otherwise, your ravioli may burst).
After about forty-five minutes of making ravioli, we had a nice big pile of it, but I’m convinced there’s a better way. Even assuming we didn’t have a pasta marker OR a pasta wheel (which we don’t), there’s got to be an easier way to do it! I told Andrew, “With ravioli, every one counts.” You individually create each one, so each one means something special (that is, it means five minutes of working time). It’s a pretty painful process, but very rewarding when you see it all at once:
Cleanup was easy because I had my handy-dandy pastry scraper:
Ideally, you should let your ravioli sit in the fridge until you boil it, although we did manage to use room-temperature ravioli with success. Refrigeration just makes it less likely that you’ll rip the dough when you transfer it to the boiling water.
I was quite surprised when the ravioli withstood the boiling water. We didn’t really try to boil the pierogies we’d made, so I was kind of anxious about boiling these. Sure, some of them were too tough because the dough was too thick (I blame the recipe, which didn’t state how thin the dough should be; I recommend 1/8”, rather than the more typical 1/4”, which is the size I aimed for). Overall, though, they turned out fine, however! (And even though Andrew paced about the kitchen like a lost soul as I made them.)