Curried ravioli: Asian ingredients in a European-style dish

This one's an attempt from work, so no pictures, alas. The bright yellow sauce was very attractive, as was the orange-with-green-bits stuffing for the ravioli. Just try to imagine, eh?

At my last workplace, I learned a trick for making ravioli with wonton wrappers. The process moves along quickly enough that with a bit of practice, I was able to make several dozen in half an hour there. I'm a little rusty now, so the work was a bit slower.

I love how this works, so I wanted to share with you here. Start with your favorite filling, a very small portion scoop (the kind that have a spring handle that you squeeze and then a wire draws across the scoop to empty it out), a stack of wonton wrappers, a bowl of water or thinned-out beaten egg and either your fingers or a pastry brush. Lay out 12 wrappers on a countertop or cutting board, arranged in a pair of lines. Brush half of them (just one line) with water/egg. Plop a scoopful of filling on each of the wet wrappers. Now brush the wrappers in the other line. Flip the wrappers onto the ones with the fillings, match up the edges and corners and be sure to "burp" any air caught around the filling. Seal the edges with a fork or special ravioli tool. Repeat the process until either the filling or the wontons run out. These can now be frozen for later use, or dunked for a few minutes into boiling water until they are cooked through.

Wonton wrappers come in various sizes, so change your scoop size to deliver the amount of filling you can reasonably fit onto your little wonton squares and still seal them properly without having filling leak out the corners/edges. 

The filling for my most recent batch was mostly cooked sweet potato with Indian spices (I hope I'm remembering correctly that I used garam masala, ginger and garlic and possibly some extra ground coriander), some leftover filling from an earlier stuffed vegetable Indian dish, and green peas. I had a frozen batch of maybe about 30 ravioli or so to prepare and I knew I'd want them swimming in sauce because they wouldn't be served until the next day. To start the sauce, I pureed four or five cloves of garlic with a couple of tablespoons of chunks of fresh ginger, cooked the paste in a couple tablespoons of canola oil for just a few minutes, then added the spices that would flavor and color the sauce: ground coriander and cumin, plus Spice House Hot Curry Powder blend. After the spices had a chance to bloom in the oil, I stirred in three 15-oz cans of coconut milk and waited until the sauce came to a boil and thickened slightly. After a bit of seasoning with salt, the sauce was ready for pouring over ravioli.

This dish is a mixed success. The flavor and color were amazing, especially with a little sprinkling of chopped cilantro leaves for a garnish to contrast with the bright yellow sauce. The downside is that after an overnight of hanging around in the sauce, the ravioli got so soft that many broke apart when being spooned out of the dish for serving the next day. Although they were swimming in sauce when entering the cooler, they stuck together anyway. Also, the coconut milk sauce dried a bit and had cracks in it after cooling down. Clearly, this dish is best served immediately, with hot sauce poured over freshly-cooked ravioli. I'd also prefer, if making this at home, to let the frozen ravioli thaw before cooking them, or to cook the ravioli without freezing them at all. The filling was still a little cold after I cooked the ravioli straight from the freezer.

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