A specialty of restaurants on The Hill in St. Louis, toasted ravioli is one of those things that stays with you and that you look for everywhere you go. Recently I found out that Olive Garden has it on their menu -- don't know how long they've had it, but I think it's ingenious that they should offer this Midwestern specialty so that people from every corner of the country could try it without having to travel to Missouri. I don't know how close it is to the real thing -- or perhaps it *is* the real thing, as one foodie was guessing that OG gets shipments of this stuff from St. Lou. Probably so.

I have never tried making it from scratch, although it should not be too difficult (I think?). The key is to get the filling smooth enough (the food processor would be your friend here), then hand-bread the little raviolis. And of course, serve some yummy tomato sauce to go with it. The tricky part would be, of course, getting the seasonings in both the meat filling and the sauce JUST RIGHT. There is a recipe at Food Network, from Charlie Gitto's (how generous of them!) you might want to try. But if you can go directly to the source, do it!

The toasted ravioli in the picture are from Louisa Food Products, they came here frozen in a bag smuggled over by my Mom from St. Lou on her last trip here. In St. Louis you can get them in large bags at Sam's. They came just in time for our Christmas bash and were served hot as part of the appetizer tray. As to be expected, they disappeared in a flash, would you believe, despite the fact that I forgot to serve the sauce! An embarrassment, yes, but not a total loss, as everyone still sang its praises. Toasted ravioli just hits people right.