Ravioli or not, the combination of nutty squash in fresh
pasta was delicious.I used to blame it on the slow eater of the family several of us playing with stuff on the table, moving items into symmetrical arrangements, folding napkins into tiny triangles, drawing in the salt we spilled on the plate, stacking up those small disposable containers that your cream or honey mustard came in, now we are at a restaurant. Well loads of fun for sure, but nothing to do with boredom because we all of us are talkers and we all want to be next to add to the topic at hand. No, it is never boring at the table. It’s as if the hands have to do something even while otherwise occupied. Did I modeled this to my kids or I just passed on the OCD gene?
Sometimes I play with the food even while cooking. The result will be like an overworked painting. Who can forget? An idea pops into your head at 2AM and you sneak out of bed and do just this one thing on the canvas and then two hours later you hear “Come back to bed I have to go to work in the morning”. Which is what I did to the ravioli when I morphed it into a tortellini, except not exactly. And it wasn’t 2AM it would have been sometimes in the afternoon and only last year. Maybe that’s how most pasta forms were invented… by OCD cooks.
- Preheat the oven to 400˚F.
- Cut the squash into large pieces, remove the seeds and pulp and bake it for 30 minutes or until soft.
- In the meantime make the fresh pasta then set it aside.
- Remove the squash from the oven and let it cool.
- Scrape out the flesh and let it drain in a fine mash sieve for 15 minutes.
- Transfer the cookies to a food processor and pulse to grind.
- Add the fully drained squash, parmesan cheese, and lemon zest.
- Add salt to taste and pulse the mixture to puree.
- Next roll out the pasta dough to a thin sheet.
- If you rolling the pasta by hand, cut the pasta sheet into 4 inch wide strips.
- If you are using a pasta machine the pasta will already be in strips.
- Arrange small scoops of the filling, about the size of an egg yolk, on one side of the pasta strips and then fold it over and cut rectangles around the mounds of filling.
- Seal the edges of really well. The filling is very soft so if the ravioli comes apart in the boiling water it will just disintegrate.
- Cook the ravioli in a large pot of salted boiling water a bit past al dente.
- Keep an eye on it. This is fresh pasta so it will cook much faster than commercial pasta.
- Scoop the cooked ravioli out of the water with a slotted spoon and drain it in a fine mash sieve for a few minutes.
- In the meantime melt the butter in a non stick skillet and add the ravioli to cook it through. Serve immediately.
