Ravioli: A Learning Experience

For about a year I've been telling myself that any day now I'm going to try making my own pasta. I've read some recipes and tips, and the other day I saw a blog about ravioli, and I decided that I NEED TO EAT THAT RIGHT NOW. The writer claimed that even though you can get all fancy with your ingredients, it also works just fine to use plain old all-purpose flour and an egg, so I took her word for it and got ready to experiment!

Without even explaining the whole process, let me just tell you all of the things that went wrong:

1. I got my fingers too wet too fast when I tried to mix the egg with the flour. It got seriously goopy and problematic. I had to keep going with only one hand just so that I could use a rubber scraper with the other hand to keep un-gunking the eggy hand. 
2. My egg must have been smaller than the egg used by the recipe writer. Either that or my flour was a LOT more packed into that measuring cup. It took some serious effort to get the majority of the flour worked into the dough, and even then I didn't manage to get all of it in. The dough never really got smooth, and it was impossible to roll it as thin as I was supposed to. 
3. The recipe for the filling was really messed up-- 1/2 an onion and only 2 tbsp cheese? That makes no sense. I decided it was supposed to be 2 tbsp per ravioli (it was supposed to make 3) but I still decided to only use 1/3 of an onion, and once I'd cooked them it still looked like too much so I only used half of that.
4. I should have rolled the dough thinner (I tried!)
5. I've never even cooked commercially-made ravioli before, so I had no idea how long it should take or how I'd know if it was done
6. One ravioli started leaking, so the water was all cloudy with cheese and onions within the first 2 minutes of cooking them.
7. Definitely should have used even fewer onions, and WAY MORE seasoning for the filling.
8. Actually, I should have put the meat inside with the cheese and just put plain sauce on top.
9. Even the pasta itself tasted bland. Is that possible?
10. I also should have known that that was a lot more like two servings...and I have a pretty massive appetite.

So now that that's over with, let's see the pictures!

I love my volcano! Particularly the egg white that's coming to attack the camera.

 Look at all that leftover flour...sad. But I like my cute little ball of dough!