Thursday, February 3, 2011

Homemade Ravioli

On Tuesday, as the snow was falling, I decided to try making homemade ravioli for the first time.

As it turned out, it was time-consuming, but really not difficult at all. Unfortunately I didn't think to take photos during the process, but there are lots of tutorials online if you want to give this a try.

For the pasta, I combined 1-3/4 cup unbleached white flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon salt, about a tablespoon of olive oil and enough cold water to hold everything together. I mixed it the same way I mix my homemade noodles, only I kneaded the dough by hand for about 10 minutes, then wrapped it and stuck it in the fridge for a while.

After chilling the dough, I divided the dough into two portions. I rolled the first out into a very thin sheet, then cut the sheet in half. I lightly scored half of the sheet and placed about 1 teaspoon of filling on each square (see filling details below). Then I moistened the spaces between the filling with water and carefully placed the other half of the dough over the filling and, stretching the top dough to fit, I sealed in all the spoonfuls of filling. Then I cut the ravioli using a cutter like this one:


I repeated this process with the other portion of dough and ended up with 32 ravioli.  This is what they looked like right after I made them.  I cooked them in boiling, salted water.  They are done when they float to the surface of the boiling water.



Here they are, cooked and sauced with homemade sauce I made from some tomatoes we grew in our garden last summer and had frozen, and a sprinkle of mozzarella cheese.  I served these with homemade no-knead bread, salad and corn.  This meal was a hit with all of us.


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The Filling:  I basically guessed at the filling, and it turned out fine.  All I did was combined 1 cup of ricotta cheese with 1 egg, about a cup of cooked, finely chopped cooked chicken and about 1 teaspoon Cavender's Greek seasoning.

6 comments:

The Cookbook Junkie said...

One thing I want to work on this year is making pierogis, which is basically the same thing with a different shape and a different filling. If I could just find the time to do it.

Melynda@Scratch Made Food! said...

Great meal, home cooked the way it use to be, take what you have, make it good, then serve it up with pride! Annie your meal is that and more.

Mark said...

Great! Now I'm starving.
Looks delicious!
Your Friend, m.

McVal said...

Wow! That looks awesome! Printing me off that one!

Jill said...

Mmmmmm looks so yummy! Thanks for sharing!

Blessings
,Jill

Sonya Ann said...

Den's making raviolis as we speak! Must be something in the air!