Spring Mushroom Ravioli with Asparagus

I love ravioli and have only ever made homemade ravioli at home once, but it's just so much time and effort to just get 10 raviolis per person. However, my sister and I were at the grocery store one day deciding what to have for dinner, and I noticed some wonton wrappers and suggested to her that we buy those to make some kind of ravioli. I had heard of using wonton wrappers instead of making your own pasta dough to make making ravioli from scratch a lot easier on time and effort.

Making your own pasta dough from scratch is really fun and rewarding, but the mixing of the dough combined with allowing it time to rest, and also rolling the dough out makes it a really big effort. Not to mention, you still have to make a filling, fill the dough and cut the raviolis out of it, make a sauce, and cook the ravioli. Using wonton wrappers meant that I only had to make a filling, assemble and cut the ravioli, cook them, and make a sauce. It's still a lot of work, but it's a lot less than if you make your own pasta dough.

Here's the recipe I came up with.

Pasta Dough

1 package of wonton wrappers

Mushroom Filling

1 package of roughly three portobello mushrooms
1 package of white mushrooms
1 small onion
4-6 garlic cloves
butter
fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce 
parmesan cheese
olive oil
garlic cloves, chopped
1 bunch of asparagus
salt and pepper to taste

For the filling, cut the onion into chunks. Peel the garlic. Process the mushrooms, onion, and garlic cloves in a food processor.

Heat a pan with a bit of butter and once heated, toss the mushroom, onion, and garlic mixture into the pan to cook. At the stage that you start to cook the mushroom mixture, add the fresh thyme, and salt and pepper (I don't recall exactly how much thyme I used, but keep in mind that it's a strong flavour, so you probably only need 3 teaspoons or so; I just eye-balled it.)

Once the mixture looks cooked, take it off the stove and set aside to cool slightly.

Once the mixture is cooled enough, you can began filling the wontons with the filling. Take a wonton sheet and spoon roughly a teaspoon of mushroom filling in the middle. Cover the filling with another wonton sheet and carefully press the dough around the filling to get rid of air. Use a ravioli cutter to cut the ravioli; a ravioli cutter will not only cut but seal the ravioli. When the ravioli are assembled, place them on a floured baking sheet and cover so that they don't dry out.

When you're ready to cook the ravioli, bring a pot of salted water to a gentle boil and when it's at a gentle boil, drop the ravioli in. When they float, they should be done.

Cook the asparagus in a pot of water until just cooked; the asparagus should be a bright green still and you should be able to stick a fork our knife into it easily.

For the sauce, heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and, once heated, add the chopped garlic. Once the garlic looks soft and cooked, add the cooked asparagus to the mix and some salt and pepper. Toss the cooked ravioli in and some parmesan cheese to taste.

For serving, you can top the pasta with more cheese. This recipe makes approximately 10 raviolis for 3 people.