Homemade Cheese and Chicken Ravioli

Tonight was the first time I ever made homemade pasta. My mom got me a pasta machine similar to this one - something that I have been wanting for a while now. I opened it up read the directions and decided to follow a similar recipe for white flour pasta but replace the white flour with spelt flour - I also ended up adding an egg, water and oil. Well, half way through I thought I was going to rip out my hair. It seemed that my pasta was too dry and every time I went to pass my dough through the pasta machine to make it thin, it just crumbled on me. After doing some research online, I decided my dough must have been too dry and added small amounts of water - and eventually it worked!!! :) The filling for the ravioli was the easy part and I can think of so many more options that could be used as filling - the possibilities are endless. For anyone who has a pasta machine and is gluten free, there are recipes online for gluten free pasta as well. I may even try some myself. I ended up baking the ravioli in the oven with some marinara sauce I found at Costco (I surprisingly really enjoyed the taste of the marinara sauce). I baked them in the oven because I was so scared to boil them and have them fall apart on me - after all the trouble I went through! Before my first bite, I was so worried I had wasted a bunch of time and ingredients but fell in love with these cheese and chicken ravioli. I will be making more ravioli and other homemade pasta soon - it was absolutely delicious!

Homemade Cheese and Chicken Ravioli

Homemade Cheese and Chicken Ravioli       
          Pasta

• 1 cup spelt flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• water (as needed)
  Filling

• 3/4 cup ricotta cheese
• 1 cup shredded cooked chicken breast (I baked mine)
• 1/3 cup marble cheese
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 tsp basil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• pinch of nutmeg
  Extra

• Favorite tomato/marinara sauce

For the filling: Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. 

For the pasta: Mix spelt flour and salt together. Mix egg and olive oil together. Make a well in the flour mixture and add the egg mixture. Need dough until consistency isn't too dry but isn't sticky either; add water if needed. Wrap in plastic wrap and cover for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, cut dough in thirds and roll out each third with a rolling pin. Pass dough through pasta machine until dough is really thin (almost see through). Cut the thin dough into approximately 1" strips and add approximately 1 tsp of filling on one side of strip. Fold strip over and press the three sides together. After all ravioli has been prepared, add a small amount of tomato/marinara sauce to the bottom of a baking dish and align the ravioli on top of the tomato/marinara sauce. Cover ravioli with remaining sauce and loosely cover baking dish with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes. Enjoy!

Blog Question: What has been some of your kitchen mistakes and were you able to fix them?