A little background on why I decided to create this recipe. Oh, come on, you didn't really think I was just going to give you all my recipes without making you listen to me babble a little first, did you? I have always really loved squash. My mom even told me a story from when I was really young and just kept eating more and more squash for dinner. I apparently didn't eat squash for a awhile after that, but when I did, I fell in love with it all over again. While most people eat primarily ice cream and pudding after having their wisdom teeth out, I primarily ate mashed squash. So, a few years back when I went to a fairly nice Italian restaurant with one of my good friends, and saw butternut squash ravioli on the menu, I just had to order it. It was amazingly delicious and ever since I have been trying to find good squash ravioli other places, and I haven't been able to. This is what made me decide to try and make my own butternut squash ravioli, and I think it turned out pretty successful.
So, without further ado:
Roasted Butternut Squash Ravioli
Ingredients:
For the Filling:
1 whole butternut squash
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
For the sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup milk
1 TBS corn starch (dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water)
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
A good pasta dough recipe (There are plenty of them out there, I had to look one up too, don't expect me to do everything for you, sheesh)
Start by roasting your butternut squash. You can really do this in anyway you want, but I have a few tips that I think make this a little easier. First peel the skin off of your squash with a potato peeler. It may sound weird, but it's much easier than trying to scrape the cooked flesh out of the skin. Next thing to do is to get your biggest, baddest knife in your kitchen and giant cutting board and get ready to butcher that thing. Chop a little off both the top and the bottom of the squash, then cut it in half length wise. Next comes my least favorite task of all, getting out those pesky seeds. I usually start this task calmly, scraping with a spoon, but in the end I'm wielding a knife and cursing that squash need a way to reproduce. Do whatever works best for you. After the seeds are gone, cut the squash into about 1 inch cubes, place those on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray, sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and stick in a 400 degree oven for 35-40 minutes or until the squash is soft. This is what my squash looked like before I exposed it to those grueling temperatures:
After the squash has roasted, let it cool down for awhile. The next thing you are going to want to do is blend the squash with the chicken stock, and it's never a good idea to blend hot liquids. To blend the squash, stick the cooled cubes in your blender, pour in the chicken stock (or broth, it doesn't really matter), stick on the lid and let the blender do it's magic. You may need to stop a few times to wriggle some things around and then start blending again. You want the mixture to be smooth, but not "I could feed this to a 6 month old" smooth.
Cover with plastic wrap and then chill for at least an hour. (I never said this was going to be quick tasty food)
While that is chilling, it's the perfect time to make your pasta dough. Making pasta is not for the faint of heart. If you don't have good kneading hands, can't handle touching raw eggs, or the thought of gross stick flour all over makes you ill, it may be best to opt out of making your own pasta. You still want to make the ravioli? Try using wonton wrappers as an alternative. It won't be the same, but it the results will still be similar.
My pasta dough recipe calls for it to sit for hour before rolling out, so while the dough is resting, move onto the sauce. Now if you have a sauce preference of some kind, go ahead and use that sauce. Like Alfredo? Go for it. A simple brown butter sauce sound better to you? Fine by me. However, I would steer away from red sauces for this particular recipe, the flavor profiles just aren't a very good match. If you don't have sauce preference, my sauce is pretty dang easy.
To make the sauce all you have to do is: Melt the butter over medium heat, stir in the chicken stock and milk. Then wisk in the corn starch mixture and boil until thickened. After it has thickened add the garlic salt, nutmeg, and Parmesan cheese, then remove from heat.
After this I poured my sauce into a microwave safe bowl. It sat in the fridge until the pasta was ready, then I heated it in the microwave for 2 minutes before pouring on top of the pasta.
At this point everything should made, and it's now just time to assemble. I have an awesome pasta machine, and a trusty sous chef (Daniel always rolls pasta out for me, it's so awesome) to help me get my pasta dough to the right thickness, but you can still make ravioli without those things, it's just going to take more work. Today, Daniel divided the pasta into three parts and rolled each one through the machine. You always start on the thickest setting and gradually get smaller with each pass. For this ravioli I recommend going to the 3rd smallest setting. Don't have a pasta machine? Get out the trusty rolling pin and roll out long, thin strips. Once the long strips have been obtained, by whichever method, it's time to start filling. You will want about 1 tsp of filling per ravioli, and each spoonful should be placed about an inch apart. You will want to drop the dollops of filling in the middle of the bottom half of the strip. This is hard to explain, so take a good look at the picture.
You are going to want to seal around the filling really well at this point. It's pretty bad if the filling starts seeping out during the boiling process. I then cut the raviolis out using a round-scalloped cookie cutter. After they are all cut out my pasta looks like this:
At this point all you need to do is cook. You will want to cook the ravioli in batches. Bring about 2 quarts of water to boil and add about 6 ravioli. Cook for just a few minutes, or until the dough color lightens and pasta starts to float, remove with a slotted spoon and add the next batch. Repeat until all the pasta is cooked. I got about 2 1/2 dozen ravioli. Once all the ravioli are cooked, toss with the heated sauce and you are good to go. The sauce may not seem like a lot, but the ravioli have a lot of flavor so they don't need much. My finished product:
I realize this is somewhat of a difficult recipe, and it is pretty dang time consuming, but I swear it is really delicious. I will showcase a variety of skill levels with my recipes, so if this seems a bit much for you, don't worry, shorter, easier recipes will be coming.
