Duck Liver Ravioli

It's a girl!

I'm sorry for keeping you waiting on the edge of your seats all week, but we finally opened our box in front of family and friends and we're having a girl! 

My wife and I are both very happy. Yes I was in the minority for my support for 'Team Blue', but 'Team Pink' won out and as long as our baby is healthy, it can be whatever gender it wants to be. 

Moving on in the cookbook, I've decided to make another pasta. I know, I know, I've made lots of pastas so far. But I figured as a penance for taking so long between posts, I'd eat a little humble pie and make this next recipe. Actually, humble pie sounds much more appealing than liver!  

Duck liver ravioli is not a recipe that's very high up on my bucket list to try in this cookbook. In fact, the last time that I had liver was way back in culinary school when we made chicken liver pate. I'll be honest it nearly made me gag so I don't have high hopes for this one. 

This is mainly an important recipe because of what was hammered home in previous posts, that every part of the animal is used. There is no waste. Whether it's a Michelin-starred restaurant or the kitchen of a grandmother in Sicily, there is no waste. So far, Mario has shown us creative ways to use the most common parts of the duck, now we'll look at the often discarded parts and see what he does with them. 

I start out by making a batch of fresh pasta dough. It's actually a half recipe because I don't see the family beating down my door to try these and I really don't need a freezer full of them. But there I am making the dough. 

For the filling, I heat a sauté pan with olive oil and slowly cook thinly sliced red onion. 

After about 10 minutes, I add the duck livers and red pepper flakes and cook for about 8 minutes until they are browned. 

Next, I add red wine and simmer until the liquid is almost completely reduced. 

This mixture is now ready for the food processor. Mario instructs us to pulse the mixture until puréed but still a little bit lumpy, making sure not to make a perfectly smooth purée. 

I then take the liver mixture out of the food processor, put it into a mixing bowl, and fold in some butter until fully incorporated. I never let the liver mixture completely cool so the butter will fold in nicely. 

At this point the recipe instructs to fold in some cubed foie gras. My wife and I, being very much against the use and making of foie gras, decided that it was best if I left it out. Sorry Mario, but principles are principles. It's sad that some restaurants are still putting it on their menu. So inhumane. I get it, Michelin likes to see it on menus that it hands stars out to. But this is one house that won't be buying it. 

The liver mixture is done when seasoned, so I start rolling out my pasta dough into long sheets. I place small spoonfuls of the liver mixture on the sheets. 

Then another sheet goes on top with a tight seal. For this shape, I just use my square ravioli cutter to do the job but you could very well cut them free form.  

I now am ready to get my pasta water boiling and start the pan sauce. I drop my ravioli into the salted cooking water and melt some butter in a sauté pan. Once the butter stops bubbling it's ready to have a few drops of that aged balsamic vinegar swirled into the pan. Yup, thats really all it is. 

Once the raviolis are finished cooking I add them to the sauté pan. My sauce was a little tight, so as Mario suggests I added a little bit of the pasta cooking water to the pan to loosen. Now that it's complete, the ravioli are taken off the heat and I throw in some fresh chopped parsley and grate in parmigiano-reggiano. 

I plate the ravioli. And now for the moment you've all been waiting for...

It actually tasted pretty good. I ate the whole plate. The vinegar, butter, cheese combination helped distract me from the fact that I was eating fricken' liver. I was pleasantly surprised by this dish Mario. Not enough to make it every other week, but overall I didn't hate it which is like a huge thing coming from me. My wife, forget it. She wasn't even going to stay in the same room as the ravioli. Your loss. I'm sure that including the foie gras would have added more richness and a more pronounced 'liver taste', but honestly it was fine without it. 

I'm going to probably let my wife pick out the next recipe. She's been missing out on the fun for a few posts now. She's just very picky on what she tries out of the book, but I will let the future mother of my daughter have a turn. Until next time...