IMG_20130320_182031When the first day of Spring hit this year, I was stumped.  I had lamb ready to cook to properly celebrate, but it was also National Ravioli Day.  I thought to myself, “well, I’ve never had lamb ravioli because I don’t think I was ever given the option to try it” so that’s what I chose to create.  I wanted to gather the flavors of spring and pack them into one square ravioli.  I freestyled the process, as I do with most of my recipes and began by making the dough for pasta.  Listen, I’m no professional, I don’t even have a pasta machine…not even a ravioli stamp but this dough came out great.  More about the dough and its recipe in my next post.  I then headed into my fridge and pulled out a tub of ricotta, a chunk of parmesan, an egg, a lemon, mint and cilantro.  I had picked up a few pounds of lamb shoulder at my butcher (my heart goes boom for lamb lollipops, but they were far too expensive for my pocket that day).  I chopped up 1 cup of mint and 1 cup of cilantro and tossed it into a bowl with 1 cup of ricotta and about 2 cups of freshly grated parmesan.  I squeezed the juice from the lemon, cracked the egg and whipped it all together.  At this point the filling is almost complete.  Next, I chopped up some garlic and threw it into a sauté pan with olive oil on medium heat and placed my lamb shoulders in there, about 5 minutes on each side with a few splashes of dry red wine and a pinch of salt & pepper to taste.  When they were done cooking, I brought them over to my cutting board and chopped them up and whisked them into the ricotta mixture.  Add salt & pepper to taste and voila, you’ve got yourself one bad ass ravioli filling.