Ravioli, Pasta Favorite

Pasta comes in may forms. There are pizzas, spaghetti, lasagna and, of course, ravioli. Many people love the taste of this wonderful food.

It is a traditional Italian dish made by stuffing filling inside pasta dough. The result looks like a pillow. It is found in supermarkets everywhere in various forms. It can be fresh, frozen or canned. The filling of ravioli varies. It can be beef or cheese or anything really. The filling is limited by one's imagination. Ravioli is boiled and then served with a sauce.

Ravioli is derived from an Italian word, which means "to wrap". Different places in Italy have different versions of ravioli. There are ravioli made from beef, pork and seafood. For the health conscious, there are ravioli made from vegetables. Popular ones include spinach ravioli, squash ravioli and mushroom ravioli. In some places, their ravioli are baked in rich creamy sauces after the boiling.

The first time ravioli was mentioned in writing was in the 14th century but we can easily assume that ravioli was created much earlier. There was already a ravioli recipe available during this time. The recipe is readily recognized as ravioli except for the use of spices in powdering it. During this century, this Italian dish had spread to England. It was mentioned in a manuscript. They called it rauioles however.

Vegetable ravioli are very popular. While they cater to the health conscious now, long ago they catered to the religious. Fridays and Lent are times of fasting when red meat is forbidden for the devout. Vegetable ravioli solved this problem for the upper class while the lower class that couldn't eat meat often ate vegetable ravioli because they had no choice.

The idea of stuffing dough with filling is not endemic only to the Italian soil. This has occurred to many cultures around the world, particularly the Chinese. Wonton is almost the same thing. In fact, the Chinese refer to ravioli as Italian wonton. Like ravioli, wonton is a dough stuffed with filling. It is then boiled and steamed or deep-fried. Other ravioli like dishes are pelmeni from Russia, Ukraine's varenyky, Germany's Maultaschen and manti from Turkey.




Jonathan Russell is an artist and blogger that has been writing articles on many different topics for the last 2 years. You can find him contributing articles at http://www.beginningquiltingnow.com