Very confused and about to make ravioli. Question about ingredients and necessary tools.

Here is the picture:

Thank you to everyone who answered! I could not have done this without your help. For those of you who guessed, this was my first time making pasta of any kind, and by far the most difficult recipe I have ever attempted. It was also my first time blanching greens and browning butter. I decided to just go for it, taking everyone's suggestions into account. I also called the restaurant when I went back and looked at the menu and saw that it called for mint, but there is no mint in the recipe.

Here's what I did:

The pistachio filling was very easy to make. No sweat there, just be warned that it is not visually appealing.

The dough was a bit trickier. The 20 egg yolks were just right with about 2 1/4 cups of flour, the last 1/4 cup added 1 Tbsp at a time. It took about 15 minutes to knead but was indeed very smooth. I had no problems with it sticking - I only had to use the tiniest bit of flour.

Rolling the dough was interesting. I basically just rolled it as thin as I could, and then a bit thinner. It wasn't terribly difficult to keep it consistently thin, and I could just lift the dough and run it through my fingers. By the end, I could see my hand through the rolled out dough.

I decided to use a ruler, a pizza wheel, and a knife to cut the dough. It would've been a lot faster to use a cookie cutter (and I definitely would in the future), but I couldn't find one that was 2.75", and I wanted to be as close to what I ate in the restaurant as possible. I cut the first sheet very carefully with the ruler, then used those squares (they looked just like very thin kraft singles) as templates for the next sheets.

Filling and sealing was very simple. Only one cookie cutter is necessary, I used my fingers to push the air out and seal them. It was very intuitive how much filling to put in, and very easy to just press together and seal.

The browned butter sauce was a bit tricky. I called the restaurant and learned that there is supposed to be a bit of mint in it, so I went outside and picked a bit. Not sure exactly how much. I then chopped it and threw it into the butter with an extra 1/2 cup of pistachios. Be careful when adding the lemon juice. I did it when the butter was still hot, so it splattered all over my entire kitchen. No fun. I then let it cool down and re-added it before heating it back up.

Do not put cacao nibs on top. The restaurant said that this was a typo.

The final product (I tried to attach a picture but the website wouldn't let me, I'll try again in a few minutes as a response to this post) was very tasty, nearly like the restaurant. All in, it took me about 6 hours to make, but wouldn't have been nearly as time-consuming with a pasta roller. If I had a pasta roller, I would absolutely make this again.

Your confusion is understandable as A.) it appears you have never made fresh pasta before, and B.) you have chosen a poorly written recipe to follow for your very ambitious project.

(stands on soapbox)

The hyperlinked recipe is the epitome of all that is retarded about contemporary recipe writing in the USA. It is 100% text (the one gratuitous image is actually a still frame from the accompanying video). Worse, the imagery doesn't match what is described in the text (more later on that).

In an era where decent, illustrative, and helpful food photography is free, this all-text recipe is a complete atrocity. And this isn't unique to this recipe, it happens in most American food websites (including this one), foodie blogs, etc. The modern USA recipe modus operandii is to offer very concise instructions with zero imagery and worse, no reasoning as to why things are done, what options are available, and what happens when you do things a different way. There are a few exceptions.

Curiously, some other cultures have figured this out. The Japanese publish fabulous food magazines replete with color photos for every single step. If you can translate the ingredient list, you can basically figure out how to make the dish.

Now go to your bookshelf, grab a cookbook with an all-text recipe for puff pastry dough and compare. It will be unbelievably obtuse.

We'll go to a ravioli recipe that has helpful imagery as evidence of how moronic the CBS News recipe really is.

(steps off soapbox)

Now let's address some of your topics.

Pastry cutters:

This is a set of round pastry cutters:

https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Professional-Cookies-Kitchen-Cutters/dp/B013VTTKDO/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1520955473&sr=8-4&keywords=pastry+cutter+round

They make fluted ones as well.

If you look at the rollover images, you can see the blunt edge. The CBS recipe instructs you to use the blunt edge of the large cutter to define the intended target location.

The problem with the CBS recipe and particularly the accompanying video is that the chef has served square ravioli, not round ones. That's quicker to assemble (important in a restaurant kitchen) and creates less waste at the expense of aesthetics.

Strike one against the CBS recipe: the written instructions don't match what is displayed which causes confusion.

Pasta machine:

The typical Italian hand-crank pasta machine has eight thickness settings, with #7 being the second to the thinnest. Here's where the recipe fails yet again. They could have include one sentence about how thick to roll the pasta if you are doing it manually.

Setting #7 is a thickness of just under 1/16" or 1.5 millimeters. Remember, for ravioli, you are stacking two sheets of pasta dough so you are getting twice the thickness of the individual sheet.

Too thin and you won't have the right filling/pasta ratio. It may also be harder to handle and may end up tearing or splitting during cooking.

Too thick and you'll have a less enjoyable ravioli as you'll be biting into a fat slice of dough.

Pasta machines provide consistent results. Sure, you can probably roll out pasta to 1.5 millimeters. How would one measure? If I had to do this, I’d take the rolled out sheet, fold it over twice so there are four layers of pasta, then measure: it should be 6 millimeters thick.

Is your hand-rolled sheet even across the entire length and width? Can you do it for seven other sheets? Getting that type of manual consistency usually takes years of practice. Hats off if you have that ability today.

Eggs:

Pasta can be made with or without eggs and the amount of eggs (whole, yolks, whites) will affect the end result. The more yolks you put in a given amount of flour will result in a more yellow and eggier pasta.

I happen to have my own preferences as to how many eggs I get in my pasta dough, sometimes more, sometimes less. One recipe I've consulted recommends 2 whole eggs and 4 yolks per 10 ounces of flour (approximately 2 cups). That's a little eggier than I like myself, so often I do 4 whole eggs.

The CBS recipe lists 20 yolks for 2-3 cups of flour. That is a heck of a lot of egg yolks (and consequently fat) in a pasta dough, and one that will be harder to manipulate and handle than a dough that has more water content.

Note that the CBS recipe comes from a restaurant kitchen, so invariably they are using large eggs. If you are using extra large or jumbo eggs, you will need to take that into consideration.

A more methodical approach would be to just make plain pasta dough (forgetting the ravioli thing for now) and just concentrate on making really great pasta with an egg content that fits your taste buds.

This article from Serious Eats is one that I have consulted:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/01/best-easy-all-purpose-fresh-pasta-dough-recipe-instructions.html

Note the sheer number of illustrative images and the text is replete with information about alternatives, both good things and bad things that happen when you change things and WHY THIS HAPPENS.

The CBS recipe was written for restaurant cooks who get to see it being made every day, the quantities scaled down for a home cook.

Raviolis:

I don't see the filling of the CBS recipe as being extravagantly expensive. Sure pistachios are more expensive than peanuts, and mascarpone is more expensive than cream cheese, but these are small quantities and are relatively cheap compared to ingredients like lobster, crab, foie gras, truffles, etc. (all of which can make it inside ravioli filling).

So what did this chef do? He ignored his own instructions, laid out a sheet of pasta about 4.5-5 inches wide, plopped two rows of filling about 4.5-5 inches apart, egg washed the exposed dough, then laid a separate sheet on top. He then cut the raviolis into 2-2.5" squares. Very efficient, very little waste, maximum use of pasta dough.

Okay, here's the Serious Eats article on ravioli making:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/02/how-to-make-homemade-ravioli-recipe.html

Again, note the sheer number of illustrative imagery, along with instructs for multiple methods of making the raviolis (with a mold, manually with two sheets, manually with the foldover method).

Can one make great pasta following the CBS recipe's instructions? Absolutely. Do you need to know what you are doing in the kitchen? Yes, you do. Again, the CBS recipe was written by a professional for other professionals. That's fine, that's how cookbooks were written up until the late 19th century.

Today, publishing that type of recipe to an audience of home cooks, many of whom will undoubtedly have little experience is short sighted.

Photos are free on the Internet. Post as many as makes sense.

There are very few American food sites like Serious Eats who have figured this out.

Could you be successful making the CBS recipe? We don't know your level of kitchen skills, the amount of patience you will have, your dexterity in the assembly.

My suggestion to you would be to focus on making the dough, starting with the basic Serious Eats recipe:

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/01/fresh-egg-pasta.html

that is linked from the in-depth article. That will give you a baseline. And guess what? You may want more eggs or less, but at least you can see with your own eyes what changing quantities will do to the final product.

If you really want to make the raviolis, I suggest you use the foldover method. Unless you can get all of your pasta sheets to very similar widths, you’ll be losing more dough if you use the two sheet method as there will be significant overlap.

Anyhow, best of luck.

Or, If you really liked the filling and are intimidated by the pasta, use wonton or shao mai wrappers instead as a shortcut.

1st. Read the recipe through again. Chef Gerard Craft explains that the high # of egg yolks is to make a yellow pasta.
2nd. Look at other recipes for making ravioli, but without a pasta roller. Many suggest about 1/8" thick.
3rd. Pastry cutter is like a cookie cutter, can be many shapes, often round. Can have smooth or fluted edge. Chef's measurements here probably refer to diameter of a round version. (Yes, I know, some ravioli are rectangular.) The top side is blunt, so safe to hold. The suggestion here is to use that non-cutting side to tamp down and seal the two layers of pasta around the filling, but not cut it. You don't have to buy the pastry cutters. But they're pretty and useful, if you make cookies and/or pastry. If not using them, you can tamp down the dough with your fingers, and cut it into filled squares or rectangles using a pastry wheel or a knife.
4th. If this is, by chance, your first time making home-made pasta or ravioli or both, consider making a simpler, recipe with less expensive ingredients once or twice, to get a feel for the dough and the process. I tend to rely on Marcella Hazan dough and then use various fillings, but there are many good and easy recipes out there.
Then, after you've got the feel of the dough and the process, go back to the indulgent and glorious-sounding egg-yolk pasta with pistachio filling.
Good luck and please tell us how your adventures in pasta land turn out!