Kitchen Fail

Something occurred last night that has never happened. EVER. I ruined dinner. Ruined as in Hunter ate at Krystal's and I sulked by eating 3 chocolate covered pretzels and french fries. EPIC FAIL.

It started out well enough. I decided that I wanted to make homemade ravioli. I had seen some posts about roasted squash lately and wanted to incorporate it into a recipe. I'm all about eating seasonally/locally and squash is a great winter ingredient. I was going to combine the squash with some spinach, ricotta cheese, and sage and create my own ravioli. Since I live with a carnivore, I figured I'd make some with sausage, spinach, and sage. I was trolling the internet for the a good homemade ravioli recipe. I've never made my own pasta before mostly because I don't have a stand mixer with a pasta attachment. Most of the recipes on the internet required that, so I figured I was stuck until I found several sites that suggested using wanton wrappers as the ravioli base. I decided to try it. Everything was going fine at first. I went to the store and got all my ingredients. I even ventured into the Asian Supermarket down the street to get the wanton wrappers. I was super excited for Hunter to get home so we could start cooking.

I started by cutting the squash in half and seasoning it with salt and pepper. I let it roast in a 375 oven for about an hour or until the inside was tender. Meanwhile I chopped up my fresh sage and cooked the sausage and spinach. Once the squash was done, I scraped out the flesh into a bowl. I added the spinach and half the ricotta cheese. Using a handmixer I mixed everything together until it was smooth. In another bowl, I combined the sausage, sage, spinach, and cheese. I was ready to make my ravioli. And that's when things started to downhill. Rapidly.

I started with one wrapper and put about a tablespoon of filling in the center. I then placed another wrapper on top of that filling and sealed the edges with an egg wash. Only, the wantons weren't sealing. They were super sticky and mostly falling apart. Hunter tried to crimp the edges with a fork, but things still weren't working very well. We decided to boil the ones we'd already done and see how it went. The good news is that they stayed together pretty well in the boiling water. The bad news was that they tasted awful. The filling was good. I really loved the taste of the squash and spinach. I will definitely be making squash more. The problem was really the wanton wrappers. They were super soggy and just had no taste whatsoever. It was gross.

So lesson of this post? Don't use wanton wrappers for ravioli even if the internet tells you its possible! I'm going to try to find a homemade ravioli recipe that doesn't need a stand mixer and try again. The filling was really good and I think this recipe can be salvaged, but I was pretty disappointed last night.

Have you ever ruined a meal?