Vegan in America's Dairyland

A few years ago (3 at least), my brother Nick and I were at our parents’ house and decided to try making our own ravioli. I don’t remember why, but I think it had something to do with looking through a recipe book and discovering how easy it actually is to make pasta dough. We didn’t have any fancy equipment, so we just rolled out some pasta dough with rolling pins until it was relatively flat, and went from there. The outcome was delicious, but it was definitely tedious enough that it hardly seemed worth it. Not too long after that, my mom was at one of those Bed, Bath & Whatever stores, saw a pasta machine on sale, and decided to pick it up for me. I didn’t use it right away, because I lived in a crappy house that had a pretty nasty kitchen in which I rarely did much cooking. I’ve moved twice since then, but never got around to using the pasta machine, despite that fact that it was something I’d always meant to do. Three years passed and my sad little pasta machine sat in the basement, unused.

Then, I saw this post in Walking The Vegan Line and got inspired. After making Isa Pizza from Vegan With A Vengeance last week and discovering how truly delicious the combination of her tofu-basil ricotta and pesto was, I decided to use that very combination as the filling for some ravioli.

The pasta dough was just 1 1/3 cups of semolina flour and 1/3 cup of water, which I rolled with my pasta machine. I’d definitely recommend spending the $30 or so it costs for a pasta machine, but you could definitely use a rolling pin if you’re up to the task. If you’ve got VWAV, I’d suggest making the tofu-basil ricotta and pesto recipes, but you could really fill the ravioli with whatever the hell you want.

As you can see from this mess, you’re going to want to do this on a table or somewhere similar, but you definitely need some space.

To make the ravioli, all I did was cut the flat pasta in half lengthwise and then slice it every 3 inches or so. There is a ravioli attachment available for my pasta machine, but it totally seems pointless. This method is easy enough. I put the filling in the center, leaving plenty of room around the edges to press the two pieces together.

Cover the bottom piece of ravioli and the filling(s) with the top piece, and use a form to press down and seal the pieces together as pictured here. After you’re finished putting everything together, boil the ravioli for about 3-4 minutes in a large pot of salted water. Top with whatever sauce you want, and enjoy!

After my ravioli was cooked, I topped it with some cold sauce, some spinach and some teese and microwaved it for about a minute. It was hands-down the best vegan ravioli I’d ever had! Now, I can’t help but think about all of the delicious vegan ravioli I could’ve been making for the past 3 years.

I generally don’t eat frozen foods, but sometimes I’m feeling really lazy or just want something convenient late at night. Before I was vegan, I turned to frozen pizzas in such instances. Unfortunately, when it comes to vegan frozen pizzas, there are only a few options, and most of them are extremely expensive. I decided to try making my own frozen pizzas, and it actually worked.

I’d post recipes, but really, the technique is more important than the recipe. I made the dough in my bread machine using a recipe in a bread machine book. The sauce I made in the Vita-Mix using a recipe in the Vita-Mix book. I used FYH vegan mozzarella (but will be using Teese next time), and then topped the pizzas with bell peppers, onion, mushrooms (marinate them so they don’t burn) and seitan o’ greatness.

Because I made the dough, sauce and seitan o’ greatness myself, it’s all relatively healthy. I didn’t add a ton of salt to anything, and I didn’t put a ton of the vegan cheese on. Making everything myself made this fairly cheap per pizza, too. I made 6 pizzas for less than $20. 4 of them were the frozen ones, and 2 of them were the pizzas my girlfriend and I had for dinner the night before.

Assemble the pizza on wax paper on a baking sheet and stick it in the freezer. If you freeze them this way beforehand, sticking them in bags will be much easier. I made mine rectangular so they’d fit in the vacuum sealer bags. I’ve found that you need to make the crust as thin as you can when you’re freezing it. Otherwise, the dough doesn’t cook all the way through by the time the rest of the pizza is done.

You can stack them in the freezer. Mine only took about an hour or so to freeze. (none of that fake meat stuff is mine! haha)

After they were frozen, I vacuum sealed them. You could get a huge ziploc bag if you don’t have a vacuum sealer.

The real test: baking the frozen pizza worked fine. It was delicious! 450 for about 15-20 minutes or until it’s done. Next time, I’m going to be more adventurous with the toppings. Cook it right on the rack, or get one of those pizza pans that has holes in it. If you use a cookie sheet, it won’t turn out very well. I tried a pizza stone, and that didn’t work very well either; the bottom was too cripsy before the dough was fully cooked.