Homemade Chicken and Spinach Raviolis

I'm very excited to be sharing this recipe with Debbi Does Dinner... Healthy & Low Calorie for this week's Presto Pasta Nights!

 We can now say that we have made our own raviolis from scratch! We enlisted the help of Davids parents for this ravioli making extravaganza.

 We started with the basic pasta dough recipe for the kitchenaid mixer. 

• 4 eggs, beaten
• 3/4 cup water
• 3 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Start by combining 2 cups of flour and the remaining ingredients into your mixer and mix until combined. Slowly add in the rest of your flour until it no longer sticks to the side. Divide your dough into 4 balls and cover with a damp towel for 20 mins.

 While we were waiting for the dough to be ready, I went ahead and made the filling for the raviolis. I choose a Chicken and Spinach recipe.

• 1/2 pound ground chicken
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh spinach
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 tablespoons freshly grated Asiago cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 pinch ground black pepper to taste
• 1 (16 ounce) jar marinara sauce
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Asiago cheese for topping

 In a skillet over medium heat, cook the ground chicken until evenly brown; drain.  In a food processor, mix the chicken, spinach, and onion. Transfer to a bowl, and mix with butter, 3 tablespoons Asiago cheese, salt, garlic powder, nutmeg, and pepper. I doubled the recipe because I saw that we made a ton of dough.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out each part of the dough to 1/8 inch thickness. We used the kitchenaid pasta attachment to flatten our dough. This step is needed before you cut any pasta so it was very easy and made it the perfect thickness. Place about 1 teaspoon of the chicken mixture on to the dough in a staggering pattern. Use another long strip to cover your filling or we just had extra long dough strips so we folded it over top. 

 Seal the edges of the circles around the filling with your fingers to make sure you don't loose any filling during cooking.

We used a small espresso cup to cut out our raviolis. You can easily use a cup, cookie cutter or whatever you can find.  To better seal them up use a moistened fork around the edges. They look like real raviolis now!

David was first up to experiment with our process.

 Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil, and cook the ravioli in small batches for about 8 minutes, or until al dente.

Drain, and rinse under cold water.

Place the marinara sauce in a saucepan, and cook until heated through. Serve ravioli topped with marinara sauce and remaining Asiago cheese.

We had so much fun learning how to make this with Frank and Cora. They picked it up right away and were a huge help in making dinner. The whole process did take 1.5-2 hours from start to finish, but it was WELL worth it. Very fun night. We had so much dough we ended up making a little bit of fresh pasta, too! We felt like real Italians making this and of course we had to listen to Frank Sinatra to set our mood.