natural egg dyes - success and failures

 This year, I wanted to give natural egg dyes a try. I read tons of recipes online that used a variety of different fruits, vegetables and spices. None of these sites, however, had any actual examples of dyed eggs (except one, which was a super done up mag photo - i question it's authenticity). It seemed people loved posting recipes for natural egg dyes, but no one actually bothered to post the eggs. Did they suck? Did the recipes work? I tried seven this year. Here are the successful attempts (all of these were left in for about 20 minutes, except for the cabbage, which was left in the dye for an hour):

 As for our not so successful attempts: carrots (for orange) did nothing, spinach (for green) - nada, cranberries - nope. Next year I think I will get some dollar store paprika for orange (I thought about it this year, but didn't want to run out and definitely didn't want to use our good Penzey's stuff for egg dyes). I'd also like to try and mix maybe the turmeric and the red cabbage to see if I can get a green egg out of it. And possibly, although only if I can find inexpensive frozen berries, raspberries for a more red-pink.

For now though, I'm happy with our little egg experiment. I think they are cute, pastel, soft colors and don't have any weird ingredients. It was kind of interesting though in that they didn't come out in the same colors they dried:

blueberries: these came out more purple, and as they dried they turned this deeper blue hue.

turmeric: they came out more gold, but once dried ended up as a nice, soft yellow


red cabbage: this surprised me the most. it came out much more purple and dried this lovely robin's egg blue.


beets: came out pink, as i imagined. the eggs i pulled out quickly dried more slight purple pink. the ones i left longer in the dye, assuming i would get a darker, more vibrant pink, ended up drying a reddish-brown.

Beet Green & Goat Cheese Ravioli

Did I tell you? I got a pasta machine! Yes, after the hassle of making thin sheets of pasta with a water glass, I invested in a pasta machine. And this thing is wonderful. I love it. In one day I turned out 100 various ravioli to stash in the freezer for those "I'm too tired to cook" nights and even made a little bit of fresh spaghetti. So far, we've pulled the beet green & goat cheese from the freezer and made them as a side with our beef tenderloin roast. I love steak and goat cheese so this was a perfect combination.

This recipe is based on the recipe for the Goat Cheese Ravioli I had made before, but instead of spinach, we used the greens from our first beet harvest for the greens. It took a bit longer to steam the beet greens, and they needed to be torn apart because they were a bit large, but this basically is the same recipe. I love the fun pink color that it gives to the filling. Festive!

The other big change from the first ravioli recipe was the pasta dough. Remember I had mentioned the recipe from The Silver Spoon? Well, it uses a ton less egg (yay! even cheaper!) and took a bit more kneading, but was definitely lighter and more tender than the first recipe I used for pasta. We still had to tweak it a bit, since it was a bit dry, but I've listed the modified recipe here. Also, instead of the egg wash, I just would spray the pasta sheet with a water spritzer if they got a bit dry while filling. It seemed to work a lot better than the egg wash and kept the edges sealed well without making the edges tough at all in texture.

Ingredients (for pasta dough):
1 3/4 c all purpose flour (the Silver Spoon recommends type 00, but I have yet to find it)
2 eggs
salt
3 tbsp water

Fill a bowl with the flour and salt, or alternatively, place the flour and salt in a mound on your slipmat or non-stick surface. Crack the eggs into a separate bowl and mix lightly. Make a well in the flour and fill with the eggs and water. With your fingers, whisk the eggs and being pulling the flour into the eggs. Mix the flour into the eggs until it begins to get stiff, then being to knead. Some of the flour may not be mixed in, that's okay. Also, add more flour if the mixture is too wet or more water if it is too dry.

Once it is a uniform, smooth mixture and seems well incorporated (about 10 minutes of kneading), rest the ball under a damp cloth. To make the ravioli, I divided the ball (it looks so small, it's deceiving) into 4 parts and rolled one at a time to make sure the dough didn't dry out before I could fill and seal the ravioli. I also ran it through the pasta machine a few times on the thickest setting, folding it over on itself afterward and repeating to finish the kneading and to prep the dough before rolling into the thin sheets.

Make sure to make your filling ahead of time (before the dough), so you aren't scrambling around while the dough is getting dry. I also found this, like the previous ravioli, to scoop better into the ravioli when it was a bit cold. So, toss the cheese and beet green mixture into the fridge while making the dough to get it a bit firmer in texture. Once the dough is rolled thin, place the filling 1" apart on the pasta sheet. Cover with a sheet of the same size. Pinch the air pockets and seal between and on the edges surrounding the filling.

Cut the raviolis apart and place on parchment paper or another non-stick surface. Freeze for later use, or heat in salted boiling water until tender, about 5 minutes.

I'll be posting the other ravioli recipes as we thaw them from the freezer and make them. Look forward to:

• Sweet Potato Ravioli (a whole wheat pasta!)
• Mushroom Ravioli
• Sausage Ravioli
• Chicken ravioli

and whatever else I can think up in the meantime!

Chicken Kabobs

Here in Florida, even though it isn't unbearably hot yet, cooking indoors right now increases the temperature of our apartment so much that it's uncomfortable. This is why we love our grill. Tonight we fired it up to cook grilled chicken and vegetable kabobs. To compliment the chicken we used a colorful mix of vegetables: beets, white onion, green pepper and pineapple.

Ingredients:
1/2 green pepper
1/2 white onion
2 medium beets, steamed until tender, skin removed
2 c pineapple
1 chicken breast
olive oil
salt and pepper
seasonings or rub - we used a chili lime rub we had on hand

Turn the grill on to heat. Cut the chicken into 1" size pieces and season with the oil, salt, pepper and seasonings. Toss to coat and set aside. Cut the veggies into similar size cubes (to even cooking time). Place the chicken on skewers.

We put the chicken on first, for a total of about 8 minutes, turning once (but your cooking time would depend on the heat of your grill). While the chicken is cooking, make the vegetable skewers. Once we took off the chicken, we put the veggie skewers on the grill. I let those grill for about 5 minutes on one side to get a nice char, and then flipped to get light marks on the other side.

Remove the skewers from the grill and slide the chicken and veggies off the skewers and onto a serving plate. Toss the chicken and veggies together and serve.