Beef cheeks, Batali and a book

The meal preceded the book.

I set out to make beef cheek ravioli, a menu staple at Babbo, as closely associated with it's chef, Mario Batali, as orange clogs and ponytails. Only after I made this deeply satisfying dish did I start to read Heat, the story of a successful journalist at The New Yorker leaving his job to cook for one of the culinary giants of our generation (and really, isn't that everyone's secret dream?).

This has been the hardest meal for me to photograph so far - two of the main ingredients are pureed braised meat and chicken livers that have been run through the food processor - I was only able to get a few good shots.

I followed Batali's recipe from The Babbo Cookbook which was reprinted in Lucky Peach. His recipe was instructive but not at all pedantic - taste often and trust your instincts.

I used a mix of beef back ribs (which I had never heard of, but I wasn't able to get short ribs so I figured they would do) and beef chuck. I don't keep pecorino romano in the house so I used "the king of all cheeses" (Batali's words), parmesan. Next time I will roll the pasta dough out a little bit thicker -many of my ravioli fell apart when cooking. If you are hesitant to make the chicken livers Toscani, I urge you to try it. I was skeptical at the beginning because I have never enjoyed pate or any type of offal, but this was downright delicious when combined with the brown butter as a sauce for the ravioli. I served some of the leftover chicken livers Toscani with toasted bread before dinner and it was a huge hit.

If you now have an appetite for beef cheek ravioli your best bet may be to make it at home - after nearly 20 years, it is still hard to get a table at Babbo (according to the most recent available data... OpenTable). Do what I did and make it over several days. I braised the beef and made the chicken livers Toscani on a Friday afternoon and made the pasta, filling, and assembled the ravioli on Saturday. I froze all of my ravioli so they were ready to go whenever I wanted. Be sure to serve it to a big group of friends and family over some good Italian wine and let me know how it turns out. I hope you love it as much as I do and I can't wait to hear about it!

I will leave you with a vintage 2003 Molto Mario featuring... Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal and I'm off to finish reading Heat.