Today was my second wedding anniversary and I wanted to make something special so I decided to make my own tortellini.  I always thought that making pasta was really difficult and complicated but today I learned that it wasn't so bad!  I used two websites to help me with the recipe for the pasta, The Barefoot Kitchen Witch had a great recipe for tortellini and Coquinaria had a good pasta guide in general.

All I did to make the pasta dough was make a mound of 1 cup of flour on the counter, make a hole in the middle  of the flour and put 2 eggs in it. 
I started mixing the eggs with the flour with a fork, added about 1 tbsp of milk and continued to mix and knead the dough until it was soft and elastic!
I admit I put it in the food processor for about
30 seconds to help me in the kneading but mostly I did the kneading by hand for about 10-15 minutes.

When the dough was ready I put a drop of oil all over it and put it in a tightly seated ziplock bag in the fridge until I was ready to  form the pasta (about 5 hours).

The filling had:

1 cup ricotta
1/4 cup mozzarella, grated
1/8 cup parmesan
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper

When I was ready to form the pasta I cut the ball of dough in half and started rolling it out with a rolling pin until it was thin enough to go in the pasta machine which flattened it to the thickness (or should I say thinness that I wanted).  I used a glass to cut the dough into circles, put in a little filling, folded them in half, pinched the edge and then folded them over.  It took a few tries to make the shape I liked and get it right but I got the hang of it.

1 oz dried porcini mushrooms
1 cup boiling water
1 tbsp butter 
1/4 onion, finely diced
1 tsp dried thyme
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup cooking cream
1 vine tomato, peeled and diced

Soak the mushrooms in water for 20 minutes, drain (reserving the water) and chop finely.  Melt butter in a pan and saute the mushrooms for a couple of minutes.  Add the onion, garlic and thyme and saute a few more minutes.   Add the reserved water and allow to reduce about 10 minutes. Add the cream and let simmer a few minutes until combined.  Add the tomato and simmer a few more minutes.

Just before serving, boil a pot of water, drop the tortellini in a few at a time.  they will sink to the bottom of the pot and then rise to the top when they are ready, remove them with a slotted spoon and toss with sauce.

1 Baguette, sliced lengthwise
6 tbsp butter melted
6 garlic cloves minced
3 tbsp Italian parsley chopped

Mix butter, garlic and parsley, spread on baguette (I had extra butter leftover). Grill the bread under the broiler, make sure not to burn it!
(I burned mine which is why I won't post any pictures of the finished product).