My idea of the perfect Sunday afternoon is to slave away in the kitchen. No joke. I really do. I love this time of year with the windows open, cooking shows on the television, and a big cooking project in the works. One of those projects is pasta making. Yes, there are some shortcuts you can take, like making the dough entirely in a food processor, and using a pasta machine, but it’s still a labor intensive process.
This time I made two types of pasta. One for the less adventurous eaters in our house: a simple cheese ravioli in red sauce. The other my personal favorite: butternut squash with brown butter sage.
Both pastas used the same pasta dough. Simply add 4 eggs, 3 1/2 c. all purpose flour and salt to the food processor with the dough blade in place. Run it until the dough balls up and runs around the outside of the bowl. Then turn it out onto a floured surface and knead a few times.
Once the dough is needed a few times, wrap it in plastic and set it aside on your work surface to rest about 10-20 minutes.
While your pasta rests, mix up your cheese filling. Ricotta, egg, salt, finely chopped parsley & basil and loads of fresh parmesan. Can’t go wrong!
Back to the pasta–run it through your pasta machine starting with the widest setting first, gradually moving down until you reach the second thinnest setting. Did I mention that little hands love to help with this??
Lay out your bottom piece, and space a heaping tablespoon of cheese filling along the length of the dough.
Put your top layer on, press out the air and cut with the fancy schmancy cutters you only use twice a year. Or an appropriately sized glass turned upside down works too.
Gently boil these babies, or freeze them in a flat layer. Once frozen, you can gather them up into a larger bag stacked on each other. Freezing them flat first keeps them from sticking together. When I learned this trick for berries and cookie dough, it was a happy happy day for me.
Saute some olive oil, garlic and onion til soft, and add a can of really good crushed tomatoes. Let that simmer with a few sprigs of fresh basil for about half hour and season with salt/pepper and a dash of sugar as needed. It’s a simple and delicious red sauce that is a go-to quick dinner around here. Top with freshly grated Parmesan. There’s never enough Parmesan for the kiddies here.
BROWNED BUTTER SAGE & BUTTERNUT SQUASH PASTA
——————————-
The butternut squash & sage pasta starts out with cubed butternut squash spread out and ready to roast…about 1″ cubes.
The cast of herbs and spices that make this squash sing. The result is a sweet & savory squash. They are: fresh nutmeg, cinnamon, sage & fennel seed.
Finely chop the fresh sage, add to a small bowl with some ground cinnamon, nutmeg, fennel seed, salt and pepper. Mix them together and toss onto the butternut squash along with a drizzle of olive oil. Roast in oven at 375 til the squash is nice and tender, slight carmelized.
Meanwhile, melt some butter in a pan and let it simmer away as the milk solids evaporate. Add some fresh sage leaves and keep an eye on things as the butter slowly begans to brown. It’s magic in a pan as the butter takes on a nutty goodness and the sage leaves crisp as they fry.
I had every intention pureeing the squash, adding cheese and making these into ravioli. After working away on the cheese ravioli, I decided to take the easy way out. Instead of re-rolling the pasta scraps from the cheese ravioli, I cut them into ‘rags’ instead. These were not fancy, by any means, but it gave a nice rustic feel to the finished dish.
Fresh pasta rags on bottom, roasted butternut squash on top, and finished with the brown butter sauce and freshly grated Parmesan. This dish is a perfect combination of sweet and savory. Love it! One of my favorite flavor combinations for fall.
