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.