The Most Beautiful Kitchen Implement I’ve Never Used

The Most Beautiful Kitchen Implement I’ve Never Used

Manufacturers are always sending me kitchen tools to test drive, but I’ve never received one as beautiful as the Fonde (pronounced fon-dee) ravioli rolling pin from the Repast Supply Company [http://www.repastsupplyco.com/]



The accompanying literature explained that the mission of Repast is to inspire people to “slow down, roll up their sleeves and cook a meal with someone they love.”

I’ve never been inspired to make pasta: seems like so much work, lots of clean up, and maybe not even worth it. I don’t even think fresh pasta is necessarily superior to dried pasta: when pasta is dry, the flavors concentrate, the texture becomes denser, and it’s much more certain you’ll be able to make pasta al dente from hard-dried than soft-fresh pasta.

However, ravioli is an exceptional case when dried pasta is probably not the way you want to go. You can buy dried or frozen ravioli, which means you’re also having dried or frozen cheese and sausage and whatever else is packed inside each little pasta pillow. That’s not really optimal. Ravioli, containing fresh ingredients, is the way to go, which means you have to get the ravioli at a restaurant or make it at home.

Just as importantly, the Fonde ravioli rolling pin looks very easy to use. Making ravioli requires just laying out a sheet of thinly rolled pasta, adding ingredients, laying down another sheet of thinly rolled pasta, and then slowly rolling over the pasta with the Fonde to create little packets of goodness.

Ravioli is probably my favorite type of pasta. It’s got all the good stuff inside, rather than with other pasta, where all the sauce and meat, etc., is just slopped on the top. I mean, I enjoy just about all pasta, but ravioli is special, as is this implement for making it.

The Fonde ravioli rolling pin was a finalist in the design category of Martha Stewart’s “American Made” competition. This kitchen implement is a thing of beauty: the alternating strips of differently light and dark wood, the rhythmic positive and negative space of the piece, the undulating central core, and overall good heft.

Once I stop admiring the implement, I will make some ravioli. Any day now.

How do you the Fonde's instructions (if it came with any) say you're supposed to get the little spoonfuls of filling to line up with the edges of the openings in the roller? Maybe you could roll over the first sheet of dough lightly to create a grid pattern so you know where to put the filling spoonfuls.

Katie wrote:How do you the Fonde's instructions (if it came with any) say you're supposed to get the little spoonfuls of filling to line up with the edged of the openings in the roller? Maybe you could roll over the first sheet of dough lightly to create a grid pattern so you know where to put the filling spoonfuls.

You ask the right question. Video explains, and it seems to work okay with cheese, but I wonder how'd it do with sausage.