Pasta, Pasta, Pasta

For some reason, I've been uber-motivated to cook lately. I love to feed people. Its probably one of the few "homebody" types of things I enjoy. The mothering instinct maybe. Or maybe I just like good food and its always more fun to cook for two. Either way, my brain has been on overload with new recipes and things I want to try and my trips to the grocery store have been more inspired. I had planned to make a shrimp pesto linguine dish, but the leftover sausage and ground turkey in my refridgerator were just calling to be used. So I decided to make some food that could be frozen and done up quickly as late night snacky food since I had been overdosing on Korean dumpings as my standby late night fix. Spicy Sausage Spinach Goat Cheese Tortellini was born out of leftovers in my food stores.

I have no idea what the measurements were... guesstimating... I cooked together over medium heat on my stove about 1 spicy italian sausage link with the casing removed, 1/4 pound of ground turkey, 1 cup of frozen spinach, and 1 tsp red pepper flakes until most of the moisture was gone. You do not want runny insides for your ravioli, so err on the side of trying to get out most of the moisture. I put this mixture in the fridge for about 20 minutes to cool. Once cooled, I mixed in the leftover bit of herbed goat cheese, it was probably about 4 TBSP?, and 1/2 cup of finely shredded part skim mozzarella. Cracked some black pepper over everything and the filling of the ravioli mixture was born.

Once upon a time, I used to make everything from scratch. I meticulously made pasta from scratch, made my own bread, blah blah blah. Who has time to do that all the time? Certainly not me. I still like to make things from scratch, but fresh baked bread and handrolled pasta are now reserved for special occasions. The secret to doing quick dumplings, ravioli, tortellini, whatever are the pre-made asian wonton wrappers. If you can the round ones which are generally only sold at asian groceries, those are preferable. The itty bitty Safeway by my place only sells the square wonton wrappers, but they are convenient enough to be worth it.

I usually set up a little station with a big cutting board in front of my TV and pop in a good movie to make these. A lil cup o' water to seal the edges, the wonton wrappers, the mixture, some kitchen scissors, and a baking tray lined with parchment paper... take a small tsp of mixture and place in the middle of the wrapper, wet the seam and fold in half. Now with the square wrappers, I trim off the corners so the whole thang looks like a half circle at this point and then you take the two edges, wet one and press together. Place each one on the parchment paper so they don't touch. When done, stick in the freezer for about 30 minutes before putting into a freezer bag so they don't stick.

Served with some marinara sauce and a lil extra mozzarella cheese on top. Perfect way to use up leftover anything. Seriously, you could stuff almost anything in these and it would be great because its inside a pasta wrapper. I think I like the tortellini shape better than ravioli. Mostly because its fun to say tortellini. And now I'm just getting silly. Huzzah.