Are these not the most impressive
ears you have ever seen? 

I took a notion into my head that for dinner today, we would have home-made Agnolotti. This was in addition to an all-day trek involving torrential rain and resultant traffic, the needfulness to visit no less than three new babies, and a bunny speed-date and resultant addition of one Cornelius Maximus into our menagerie. No problem, right?

Ebony is severely unimpressed, but
Cornelius just wants to be loved
(and also to be the boss bunneh)

My mother-in-law was slated for a sleep-over here tonight (her house is being painted throughout). I asked her to make me a Napolitana sauce - tomatoes and fresh basil.

The bunnies are settled in to the Honeymoon Suite and so far have not killed each other - bonus!

We arrived home at 6pm, at which time we had to start with the process of making fresh pasta and the filling for the agnolotti.

My fairly ad-hoc recipe was as follows:
Pasta:
300g flour
3 60g eggs

My Kitchen-Aid machine is one of my best friends. It has a heavy-duty engine that will put up with having to beat the substantial pastry required for pasta-making, plus has attachments that will roll out the pasta sheets and even cut them into spaghetti or fettucine.  We needed just the pasta sheets tonight.



The filling for the agnolotti ended up being:
500g chicken mince
1 pkt frozen minced spinach
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 small pot ricotta

The mince was browned, with the onion and the garlic. The spinach was added and stirred over low heat until most of the liquid evaporated off. Finally the mix was removed from the heat and the ricotta stirred in.

At one point in the process I realised we had three generations of Femia women working together to make a beautiful meal. We were speaking Italian to and for Elisheba. We didn't eat til 8.30 pm, but it was a meal that we had made from start to finish from fresh ingredients, thoroughly infused with chat and laughter and companionship. 

Ho fatto questo, io! 

These are the precious moments.