Ravioli Dreams

I don’t understand ravioli.

Ravioli I have known:

Egg ravioli at Acero. One of the best things to eat in Saint Louis. Had it, loved it.

Another Saint Louis favorite, toasted ravioli. You people outside Saint Louis would call it “deep-fried ravioli.” We prefer “toasted” because there is no batter coating or dusting of powdered sugar.

There is an excellent mushroom ravioli TeddyJ serves once a week.

There are ravioli stuffed with ground meat. These are entirely too heavy.

All other ravioli has cheese in it, like cheese tortellini. What is the point? Cheese, mild. Pasta, mild. The textures and the tastes are too similar.

I think I’ve narrowed down my issue with ravioli on reviewing that list.

Homogeneity – (look, it is a word!) Smooth filled with smooth. Bland filled with bland. Heavy filled with heavy. One ingredient filled with one ingredient.

I’m used to casseroles. Starch, meat, and vegetable all in one dish. I’m having trouble picturing a ravioli like this. (And don’t talk to me about sauce. I have red sauce and white sauce and butter sauce. That’s it. The ravioli is complicated enough.)

So, I’m thinking I need something like a tuna fish casserole, in a ravioli. A filling of tuna and potato chips with cream of mushroom soup. The pasta on the outside would replace the egg noodles. However, a visit to food network does not give enthusiastic reviews to any tuna ravioli.

You know what else you don’t see in ravioli? Corn. I can’t adapt the corn casserole to ravioli. So no pre-proved corn cheddar sour cream ham combo in the ravioli.

In fact, it looks like these are the approved ravioli filling ingredients: onion paste, spinach paste, squash paste, veal, beef, or lamb paste, mushroom paste, and the ever-present ricotta cheese (which I will be making myself, la LA). My guess is that everything’s a paste because a paste won’t poke holes in the pasta.

If I had to imagine what I would like in a ravioli, it would be egg, a sharp yet slightly melty cheese, nuts, balsamic vinegar, bacon, boiler onions, prime rib, saffron, white wine, sour kraut, and chopped apples.

Maybe I could invent a chopped-apple, proscuitto, basalmic vinegar, feta and onion ravioli. There’d be spinach and saffron in the dough. It would be the color of a green apple. Would that be awful?

There must be some reason no one has made this. I feel like I’m trying to make fusion ravioli by fusing suburban midwest cooking with Italian. Like, I could take a chunk of Velveeta, put it in a ravioli and call it inside-out mac and cheese. I could even add a chopped-up hot dog to make it a full meal.