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Marisa Batini, 80 years old — Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy
She is “my grandma Marisa”! When I was young I used to spend a lot of time with her and the same did my sister and my cousins. We would play in the yard all day long. With a ball, our bikes or skateboards we used to run around the house and she never lost sight of us. She was born and raised in the Tuscan countryside 80 years ago and she has always been a housewife, but, to be honest, she has never been a great champion at cooking. Years ago she would often try, but recently she has limited it to very rare occasions. However, there is something on which she can beat everyone else: Swiss chard ravioli with meat sauce. When she cooks ravioli she gifts the all family with a tour in the past. Unfortunately, these rare tours only last the time of a meal!

Swiss chard and ricotta Ravioli with meat sauce
Difficulty: medium
Time: 3 hours (1hour and a half if the sauce is ready)
Preparation of the sauce
Ingredients:
1 kilo mature tomatoes
1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery, a sprig of parsley
½ kilo minced beef
Oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg
The first thing to prepare is the sauce because it is what takes more cooking time.
Boil the tomatoes and when they are ready, peel them and use a food mixer to make them in a sauce. Then, chop the onion, carrot, celery and a sprig of parsley and panfry everything together. After about 5 minutes, add the minced beef. Let it cook for about 10 minutes (if you like it, you can pour a glass of red wine, too). At this point, add the tomato sauce and cook everything on a simmer for 3 hours.
Now you can make ravioli.
The ingredients are:
1 kilo flour, 4 eggs, 300 grams ricotta and ½ kilo Swiss chard, parmesan, 1 egg, salt and nutmeg
First, boil the chard for half an hour, after having taken off the central part (which is hard).
Then, in a pasteboard, you can start to make the dough. Place some flour in the centre of the board, as if it were a small volcano (a small mountain with a hole in it). Open the eggs and whip them up in a dish. Then, pour them gently inside the flour volcano and use a fork to mix everything, so that the eggs are absorbed by the flour. When the dough gets harder, you can work it with your hands until it is hard enough to be divided into four parts. Stretch each part into a 1 mm layer, using a rolling pin.
At this point, take the chard and chop them with a common knife or a crescent-shaped mincing one. Blend the chard and ricotta, one egg, two spoons of grated Parmesan, a pinch of salt and one of ground nutmeg. This mixture is the filling for your pasta.
Now, cut the pasta layers in small rectangles of about 8×4 cm and put one spoon of the filling in the centre of each rectangle. Double them and close the ravioli, pressing the borders with a fork.
When you have closed them all, put them in some boiling water with salt and heat for about 10 minutes. Check one to see if they are ready before draining them. Then, you can serve them with the meat sauce.
Add some grated Parmesan to your taste. Enjoy your ravioli!