Chicken Marsala Ravioli and Bruschetta (with Crostini)

First off, cooking with friends is a glorious thing.

Secondly, cooking everything from scratch is also a glorious thing.

That being said, I give you recipes and pictures.

Spinach Egg Noodles


Thaw a 10-oz package of chopped frozen spinach.  No need to squeeze out the spinach.  The greenish water will actually help with the noodle-making process.  Chop the spinach quite small (or send it through a food processor which we didn't have).

On a clean counter, make a mountain of 3.5 cups of flour.  Make this mountain into a volcano by making a bowl in the middle and putting one egg inside it.  Don't be alarmed if your egg falls over the sides.  This is a volcano, after all.  Place the spinach on top of the egg.  I like to think of the spinach as the layers of ash settling after the volcano erupts.

Maybe that's really morbid.  Moving on.

Mix the volcano together with your bare hands.  I suggest they be washed first.  If your mixture is looking a little dry, now might be the time to add the spinach water stuff.  Ours happened to be in the bowl we thawed the spinach in.  Don't be alarmed by its green-ness.  It'll all be delicious in the end.

Knead that dough for about 10 minutes.  Then put it in a bowl and cover it with a tea towel.  Let it rest for at least 30 minutes and up to 3 hours.

You can use make these into any type of noodles you want.  You can dry them out and save them for later or use them that afternoon.  All together, the recipe makes about 1 lb of dry noodles.

Chicken Marsala Filling

We found this recipe on foodnetwork.com HERE.  It's by Tyler Florence and I've been told by a trusted source that he is the prettiest chef on the Food Network.  That means I trusted his recipe would be delicious.

And delicious it was.  You can read the recipe on the above link so I'll just tell you that I didn't measure anything out except the heavy cream.  Also, we didn't have any Marsala wine (which seems to defeat the name, now that I think about it) and so used the red wine in the cabinet.  Then we drank some.  It was delicious.  In both the food and out of the glass.

Cooking while drinking wine is generally a good idea.  I wish I had more pictures of the filling as we made it.  It was AMAZING.  The flavors all meshed together well.  Pretty Tyler Florence did not fail me!  I think there might actually be more pictures on Justine's camera, but her computer chord is missing.  So that is that.

Making Ravioli!!

Yeah.  So.  We rolled out the egg noodle dough into thin sheets. and cut them into longish strips.  Then folded them over to the filling and made ravioli.  It was fun.

After the fun of making the ravioli we suddenly realized we hadn't thought of what a good sauce might be.  Of course, we quickly spent time googling.  We found a cream-based recipe that ended up failing miserably.  So we put it down the drain.

To prepare the ravioli, we put them into a big pot of boiling water and let them go for about 10 minutes before checking on them.  They were perfectly done.  Being sauceless, we just tossed them with some butter.  This was an alright solution, but the ravioli definitely needed some sauce.  It was a little dry without it.  Delicious, but left us thirsty.  We thought some type of alfredo might be nice.

That being said, the ravioli itself was amazing.  The spinach in the noodles complimented the chicken marsala flavors quite nicely.  I'd definitely make it again.

Bruschetta and Crostini

YUM.  And I don't even like bruschetta.  But my partner in crime did an excellent job.

Mix together in a bowl 2 diced tomatoes, 1 minced garlic clove, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, salt, and pepper.

It's pretty much to taste.  Justine used a ton of dried basil, which was delicious.  We also let the bruschetta sit in the fridge for a couple hours before serving so the flavors would be all melded together.

As for the crostini, we bought a loaf of whole wheat and italian bread.  General consensus was that the italian bread was a better option with the bruschetta.

You just cut the loaves into about 1/2 inch pieces and place them on a baking sheet in a single layer.  Brush all the tops lightly with olive oil and then throw them in a 350* oven for ten minutes.  Take them out, flip them, and toast for another 5 minutes.  You can rub a garlic clove on the oiled side when they are hot out of the oven if you want to give it a little extra kick, but I don't think Justine did that.

We had a ton left over just from the 2 tomatoes even with 4 of us eating.  So we just added another tomato the next day and toasted the rest of the bread and had it for supper again.  This time we grated some baby parmesan cheese and put it on top.  That was to die for.  I'd highly recommend it.

Justine also made lemon meringue pie from scratch for dessert.  It was PERFECT.  I have no pictures of the finished product, but just trust me when I say it was amazing.

And we made roasted broccoli.  Toss in a little oil, sprinkle on a little salt, cook for the same amount of time as the crostini, and it's perfect.

It was a GREAT meal.  And we had fun spending hours upon hours in the kitchen.

And a night in the hot tub to relax our sore muscles was a delicious reward.