Kefir cheese ravioli can be served as lunch or dinner. We used combination of kefir cheese and green leafed swiss chard in a sauce made with kefir.
Serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a starter.
Ravioli dough:
300 g (10,5 oz) flour
3 eggs
The Filling:
leaves of a bunch of Swiss chard
250 g (9 oz) kefir cheese (very well drained)
1 egg white
salt, ground pepper, nutmeg
The Sauce:
500 g (17 oz) pumpkin flesh (net weight without skin or seeds)
200 ml (7 oz) kefir (after 24 hrs of fermentation)
salt, pepper, fresh or dried oregano
Instructions:
Kefir cheese ravioli preparation
Prepare ravioli dough: combine flour and eggs in a bowl, until you get homogeneous dough. If it is too dry, add a few spoons of water. It should be soft to knead but stiff. Wrap it in foil and let it rest for 1 hour at room temperature.
Make filling: Rinse Swiss chard, remove big ribs, using here only the leaves. Boil the leaves for 3 minutes in boiling salted water. Drain them and allow to cool. Then press them into your hand, making small balls the size of an egg. Press thoroughly to squeeze as much water as possible. Chop finely these balls with a knife and put chopped Swiss chard into a bowl. Add the kefir cheese, egg white, salt, pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. Mix all thoroughly together.
Roll out dough with a rolling pin, in small quantities at the same time, until you get it extremely thin. Spread the strips out on lightly floured tea towels. Moisten them with a brush. Arrange teaspoons filling in staggered rows 2-3 cm apart. Put another strip over it, press dough down around filling to stick well, then cut into squares or circles, as you wish. Press on the edges to seal completely. Spread the ravioli out, side by side, on a floured tea towel while making sauce.
Prepare the sauce
Peel the pumpkin, cut the flesh into cubes and cook it for 10-15 minutes in a saucepan with just enough salted water to almost cover it. When the pumpkin flesh is very tender, mix it with kefir. Then pour this sauce into a frying pan.
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil and cook ravioli for 5 min. At the same time, heat the sauce in the frying pan. When ravioli are cooked and all rise to the surface, drain them and immediately pour into the frying pan to finish their cooking. Stir to coat them in the sauce, add the oregano, adjust seasoning and serve hot.
