Corned Beef Ravioli...Yeah...That Just Happened

I have Mr. Alan Hall of Cabool, Missouri to thank for this dish. I don't actually know Mr. Hall, but this genius of a man made an off-hand remark on Facebook that inspired this madness. When commenting on a friend's photo of a packet of hideous green St. Patrick's Day themed cheese ravioli from Costco, he opined, "It should at least have corned beef filling." 

May Saint Patrick bless you sir, yes it should.

Corned Beef Ravioli with Brown Butter and Mustard Glaze

 Ingredients:
Small package of corned beef with spice packet
1 rutabaga
1 large sweet potato (not yam)
1 sweet onion
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 bay leaves
4 juniper berries
1 long peppercorn (extra black peppercorns if you don't have long pepper)

Simmer the corned beef in plenty of water and the spices, covered, for three hours. Cut the rutabaga in half, quarter the large sweet potato and trim the ends of the carrots and celery. Throw them in the pot and continue the simmer for another hour.

After four hours the corned beef should be literally falling apart, it will fall into pieces as you lift it out of the pot onto a cutting board, which is okay. Put the cooked vegetables into a food processor and process with one stick of good quality butter. Taste the puree for salt, and season if necessary. Set the puree aside to cool.

At this point you can just tear off some corned beef and serve it over the puree with a little bit of the juices from the pot, which is fine because you are going to have more than you need for the ravioli filling:

Or continue to the ravioli making:

Finely chop about two cups of corned beef and about one cup of the corned beef fat. (Yep. Fat. If you eat bacon or sausage of any kind, I don't want to hear a word.) Set this aside to cool.

For the pasta portion:

200 grams regular flour
200 grams semolina flour
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of cinnamon


For the sauce portion:
Butter
Grainy brown mustard
Cream sherry or white dessert wine
Salt and pepper 
 
  Mix the pasta ingredients together until you have dough, knead it for a bit, then cover the dough and let it rest for about 20 minutes before you try to start rolling it through your pasta maker. 

Lay down a sheet of pasta and use a teaspoon to distribute blobs of root veggie puree topped with blobs of chopped corned beef mixture. Dampen the pasta around the blobs with water and then lay the second sheet of pasta on top. Press down around each blob then use a ravioli cutter to cut out the ravioli.

Boil the ravioli in salted water for about two minutes, then drain and set aside.

Heat butter in a non-stick pan on medium high heat and fry the ravioli on each side about two minutes until golden brown, you can add more butter as you do different batches if you think you need it. When all of your ravioli are done frying, add about 1 part grainy mustard to 4 parts sherry in the pan, still on medium high, and then turn down the heat right away. Add salt and pepper to taste and pour immediately over the ravioli. If the glaze gets too thick, you can thin it with just a small amount of water. Sprinkle fresh chopped herbs on top, I used flat leaf parsley.

Drink a lot of beer with this, I recommend a Harp lager.