Butternut Squash Ravioli

It's officially Fall! My favorite cooking and baking season!

I love the warm spices, and hearty vegetables autumn gives us. One of my favorite ingredients to cook with is squash, whether it's pumpkin, butternut, or acorn; the abundance of varieties gives me so much to work with. I wanted to open this season with my absolute favorite pasta, Butternut Squash Ravioli.

I chose to cook with butternut squash rather than pumpkin, because I enjoy the neutral flavor butternut squash has, as opposed to the somehow strong flavor of the pumpkin. It allows me to control the flavor a bit more.

I used the food processor to make the pasta, which I'm sure every Italian is fainting over at this very moment, but this process worked brilliantly! Not only was it quicker, but less messy!

If a food processor is not up to your alley or if you don't have one, my Fresh Pasta Dough recipe works perfectly for ravioli as well.

The filling is made with butternut squash, brown sugar, nutmeg, salt, and pepper - working beautifully together. The brown sugar brings out the natural sweetness of the squash, while the salt and pepper help balance those flavors, and a hint of nutmeg warms it all up!

Making the ravioli may be intimidating, but I promise you it's a lot easier than you think and tons of fun! A traditional ravioli is usually square, but today we are throwing the rule books out the window and making round ravioli.

I used a teaspoon to help to measure the filling, but you can use even a piping bag to ensure an even dollop.

Time to shape the ravioli! During this step, you can be creative, if you don't have a ravioli cutter, you may use a cup and crimp the edges with a fork, or a cookie-cutter works just as well.

Making pasta from scratch if often very intimidating, making people too afraid to try it, but I hope this recipe allows you to face your fears!

Remember, cooking is supposed to be fun, and even though you may not get it perfect the first time around, practice makes it perfect!

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Ingredients

Food Processor Pasta Dough

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 3 large eggs

Butternut Squash Filling

• 1 lb butternut squash

• 1 egg yolk

• 1 tablespoon brown sugar

• ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

• salt and pepper

Rosemary Brown Butter Sauce

• 2 -3 sprigs of rosemary

• 1 stick of salted butter

• 2 cloves garlic, minced or grated

• Salt and pepper

• 1/4 cup white wine 

Recipe

Ravioli Filling 

1. Preheat your oven to 400° F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

2. Place butternut squash on a pan, cut sides up. Prick the squash, drizzle with olive oil and generously season with salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 45 minutes, or until soft. Allow to cool.

3. Scoop out the flesh of the squash into the bowl of a food processor. Add egg, brown sugar, nutmeg, and salt & pepper, purée until smooth. Place the filling in a bowl, cover, and set aside.

Pasta

1. In a clean food processor, add flour and salt, pulse a few times to combine. In a separate bowl, lightly beat eggs. Drizzle the eggs in a food processor, pulse until mixture comes together. * If the dough is too dry, drizzle in some water and pulse again, OR, if the mix is too wet, add some flour.

2. Turn the pasta dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead the dough into a smooth ball. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and rest for 30 minutes.

3.  Secure a pasta machine to the edge of a long countertop. Using a bench scraper, cut the dough into four pieces. Keep the extra dough covered in plastic wrap while working with one piece. With a rolling pin, roll a piece of dough into a rough rectangle so that it will fit inside the widest setting of the pasta machine. Roll the dough through the machine, catching it with one hand as you roll with the other. Take the dough and tri-fold it like a letter. Turn the dough, so one open end faces the machine and roll it through on the widest setting again. Fold, turn, and roll once more on the widest setting. 

4. Continue rolling the pasta through the machine without folding, adjusting the rollers to a smaller setting each time, until the desired thickness is reached. 

5. Place a 12-by-4 ½ - 5-inch sheet of pasta on a lightly floured surface with the longest edge facing you. Fold the dough in half lengthwise, press gently to make a crease, and then unfold the dough. 

6. Place about two teaspoons of the butternut squash filling 2 inches along the furthest edge of the pasta, about 1 1/2 inches in from the edge. Dip a finger in a small bowl of water and drag your finger around each mound of filling to moisten the pasta. 

7. Fold the front edge of the dough over the mounds. Starting in the center, gently press and shape the dough around each mound, working out to the sides. To ensure that the pasta cooks evenly, make sure the air is pressed out, and the filling is secured neatly in a circular mound in the pasta.

8. Use a 2-inch round pastry cutter to cut the ravioli into circles, Or, crimp edges with the tines of a fork. Transfer the ravioli to a lightly floured sheet pan with semolina flour. Repeat with the remaining dough to make about 40 raviolis.

9. Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, brown the butter, stirring often until the butter is golden and toasted. Add the rosemary and garlic and cook 30 seconds to a minute or until fragrant. Pour in the wine, season with salt and pepper and bring to a simmer.

10. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Boil the ravioli in batches for 2-3 minutes or until they float. Drain. Be gentle when working with the ravioli as they are delicate.

11. Add the drained ravioli to the brown butter and toss to coat.

12. Serve immediately.

* Freeze leftover raviolis by placing them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Once they are frozen, transfer them to an airtight freezer-safe bag or container. Cook them straight from the freezer. 

Fresh Pasta Dough

My mom and I along the years have acquired a lot of pasta equipment, from attachments for our Cuisinart, ravioli molds, to manual pasta machines, so it was about time we learned how to make fresh pasta!

So, two years ago, my mom and I ventured into the unknown and took a pasta making class at Sur La Table in NYC.

Homemade pasta is something that you usually watch chefs make on TV or eat it at an Italian restaurant. It's one of those dishes that home cooks, I think, stray away from, because of how much work and skill we think it requires making.

Reading the recipe on its own may seem overwhelming, but going through step by step with an instructor explaining why and how this works, really took my worries away.

The best thing I’ve learned is to BE PATIENT! Read the recipe, reread it, prep and go through each step with calm and confidence.

During the class, we both were shocked on how simple and easy it really was to make fresh pasta and were so excited to finally put all our tools into good use!

We have made this pasta recipe for many occasions since then, and every time it came out with great success!

Soon I will be posting a few more daring pasta recipes, maybe even a few colored ones!

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Ingredients

• 2½ cups (12½ ounces) "00" flour, plus more for dusting

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 4 large eggs

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Recipe

1. Fresh pasta dough is so easy to make, you’ll wonder why you never did before. If you can find Italian "00" flour, use it to make very delicate, yet chewy pasta. If not, bread flour works really well.

2. To make dough: Place flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Make a "well" in the center of the flour mixture and add eggs and oil. Using your fingers, blend the eggs into the flour mixture, stirring the flour in from the sides of the well and working outwards. When the pasta dough is thoroughly mixed, turn it out on a lightly floured work surface. Knead dough until it is smooth and flexible but not sticky, adding small amounts of flour as needed; about 5 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball and flatten into a disk. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest for at least 20 minutes or up to an hour at room temperature.

3. To roll dough: Secure a pasta machine to the edge of a long countertop. Using a bench scraper, cut the dough into three pieces. Keep extra dough covered in plastic wrap while working with one piece. With a rolling pin, roll the piece of dough into a rough rectangle so that it will fit inside the widest setting of the pasta machine. Roll the dough through the machine, catching it with one hand as you roll with the other. Take the dough and trifold it like a letter. Turn the dough so one open end faces the machine and roll it through on the widest setting again. Fold, turn, and roll once more on the widest setting.

4. Continue rolling the pasta through the machine without folding, adjusting the rollers to a smaller setting each time, until the desired thickness is reached. If the pasta sheet becomes too large to handle, use a bench scraper to cut it into more manageable lengths and continue rolling.

5. Cut sheets to desired shapes and sizes, toss with semolina flour and set aside covered with a clean kitchen towel. The pasta can be cooked immediately or covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 24 hours before use.

6. To cook pasta: Heat a large pot of water over high heat until boiling. Generously season water with salt. Add pasta and stir immediately to prevent the strands from sticking together. Boil until al dente, 2 to 3 minutes. Reserve about a cup of pasta water and drain pasta through a colander. Toss hot pasta with your sauce of choice, using reserved pasta water to thin the mixture and coat the pasta as needed. Garnish as desired and serve immediately.

   Recipe taken from Sur La Table’s Cooking Classes