Regarding my new toys: I bought my stand mixer refurbished. Some people have issues buying refurbished products, but a certain review on Amazon convinced me I could be confident in KitchenAid's refurbished mixers:
KitchenAid gets FIVE STARS, in my books, for never assuming anything. Even if the tape is still securing the box, the unit is removed completely and sent through the entire quality control process-each and every part of the Mixer is scrutinized. If, as another example, a customer returns a unit because one of the covers is missing, the same lengthy process is taken to ensure that NOTHING leaves the factory with the "Factory-Reconditioned" status unless they can stand by the product in the same way they do with the original.And I'm happy!
What did I make with all my new toys? Raviolo with Egg Yolk and Browned Butter as I saw on the Martha Stewart Show. My version differed a bit as I did not have truffles available to put on top, so I just added a bit of White Truffle Oil to the browned butter. (Aside: I was not trying pass off truffle oil as having come from anything resembling a truffle, I was just giving it a bit of that "umph". For more info on the fakery that is truffle oil, see this NYTimes article.)
I really enjoyed making pasta dough for the first time with my KitchenAid stand mixer. Since it was my first time, I wasn't sure exactly how it was supposed to go. I used the recipe listed along with the raviolo recipe. For the first few minutes in the mixer, the dough seemed way too crumbley to be able to stand up on its own so I added a very small amount of water which definitely helped. The dough kneaded on mix (Level 2!) until it formed a nice ball on the dough hook. After that, I took it out and handed kneaded on a lightly floured cutting board.
Kneading my dough by hand was especially difficult. And since I didn't know exactly what my dough was supposed to be like, I grew concerned that it was too dry, so I added water. I later realized that this was probably a mistake because when I was running the dough through the machine, it was a teesy bit sticky (not enough to cause problems with the pasta though).
While my dough was sitting, I used the chopping attachment of my 4-in-1 hand mixer to chop up the spinach for the raviolo filling - it was sexy fast and awesome.
After rolling out the dough with the pasta machine, we dropped egg yolks into the little spinach/ricotta piped houses. This part was probably the most fun and super cute - just look!
There were definitely some mishaps along the way (pasta sticking, filling escaping from the sides, a huge mess in the kitchen, John's burned fingers), but for my first pasta making I think it went pretty well. You can check out the beautiful results:
I've never been a fan of runny egg yolk in anything, but it was just perfect for this dish. It was rich, creamy and matched the flavors well. I had even wished I had bread to soak it up when I done.