Ravioli or my hands ache

Yesterday was a roller coaster of culinary emotion. I awoke eager to go to the William Sonoma knife demonstration with my roommate. We got there only to discover that what his coworker who invited him there really meant by 12:30pm was 11:00am. Bummed out about this we went to Wholefoods to grab a bite (I abstained having just recently eaten some of my dal stew) where I was blown away by the quantity of prepared food available. Arriving home an hour later I settled into watching the Giants trounce Seattle. I started the game late, so my DVR let me skip through commercials and timeouts. Perhaps it was missing the knife demo, or maybe it was the lack of witty banter by NFL announcers (fast-forwarded over) but when 4:30 rolled around I had an empty feeling in my stomach. The solution: make homemade pasta. This seemed like a good idea since just two hours earlier I had impulsively purchased a block of Pecirino Romano cheese at the East Village Cheese Shop.
The first steps in making fresh pasta are pretty easy. You take about two cups of flour and put it on a counter top in a pile. Sprinkle some salt on the flour and then make a well in the center. Into the well place two (jumbo) eggs. The well is supposed to contain the eggs. Of course my eggs just toppled the well and I needed to rush to save them. Work the eggs into the flour by hand. At first this will seem futile and everything will either be dry or sticky. Eventually the egg gets worked into the dough and after much kneading you end up with a solid piece of dough. The dough should really be dry, or else the pasta won't come out right. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This lets any gradient in moistness resolve itself in the dough.
Now comes the laborious part! Cut a small chunk -- like 1/5th of the dough -- and roll out flat. I don't have a pasta maker, so if you do, perhaps this part isn't as long and painful. When you've flattened out the piece as much as possible (use some flour to keep it from sticking), cut long thin strips. Each strip needs to be rolled out to make it thin enough to cook. When I did this I got about 40 pieces of pasta this way, each about 1/3rd of an inch wide and really thin. I let these dry out on a hanging rack (you want the air to circulate) and then cooked them for a few minutes in boiling water. On top of this I put some of the grated romano cheese and ample pepper, plus a little olive oil and called this Cacio E Pepe.
I was pretty content at this point --- the food had taken a little over an hour to make, but I was full and it had been yummy. Quickly, though, I realized that I had a significant amount of pasta dough in remaining in the fridge. I hate to waste, so I knew I needed to do something with it. The feeling I had was like when you decide your going to clean, you take everything out of the closets and move everything around, and then get sick of cleaning but realize that you can't leave everything scattered around the house. Well, perhaps I was obsessing a little, because I could have just thrown the baseball size ball of dough out the window and been done, but I didn't.
Instead I decided to make Ravioli. First step was to get filling. I went to the corner store to get Ricotta. Yet after seeing their packaged "fresh pasta" for 8$ I got the hell out of there. It was too depressing to see, for sale, something which probably tasted as good as the stuff I made and wouldn't require me to spent the rest of my evening working on. I went to the supermarket and, without much thinking, also bought three pears and a butternut squash, plus the ricotta and a tub of yogurt. I made two fillings for the Raviolis.
The first was a traditional filling. I cooked diced onion and garlic and then added a thing of frozen spinach. Once cooked I added in some fresh basil and other Italian spices and finally a tub of ricotta cheese and an ample amount of the Romano cheese. I put this aside.
Meanwhile, on my favorite cast iron I cook the butternut squash (cubed) and added to it some chopped rosemary and sage (yes mom - I found a use for the sage you gave me). I also added in some garlic here. When cooked I put this into a glass bowl and covered. Then, in my same pan I browned walnuts. To the bowl of squash I added two diced pears, and when the walnuts had gotten nicely cooked, I added them too. This all got nice and mashed, and then a few heaping spoonfuls of yogurt and some Romano. Everything received some salt too.
Looking at these two things of fillings I knew I had made too much. Oh well!
The prospect of rolling the raviolli shells had been looming for a while and finally I began the process of flattening small chunks, applying more flour, cutting into smaller chunks and finally flattening to paper thin pieces. Optimally I wanted pieces roughly 3" wide and 5" long. This seldom happened. I dried these out and once I had a few, I started to fill. I Wet the boundary of the pasta shell and then filled it with one of the two choices. Then I carefully folded everything together and hoped the shell would hold. Generally it did. I repeated this around 50 times before I had exhausted the dough. Using methods advanced mathematical theories on sphere packing I found enough room in my over packed freeze to chill these creations.
Washing dishes was a pleasure now, knowing that I didn't need to worry about pasta dough anymore.
The clock read past 11pm when I emerged from the kitchen, flour covered and hands aching. Even today, as I type, I grimace every time I need to hit the lower keys on the keyboard. Never had I rolled dough for so long as I did yesterday. Enjoyable - Yes, Worth it - Probably not. I haven't taste the creation yet, so who knows...
One side note: The initial creation of Cacio E Pepe comes from the eponymous restaurant three blocks north of my apartment. In retrospect I may have been better off going there, paying the 16 dollars, and then spending 6 hours begging for change on the street.
Post note: I had some of the Ravioli's tonight for dinner. They were good, but not worth 6 hours.