Food Friday: Pumpkin and Ricotta Ravioli

One of my favourite foods in Autumn and Winter is pumpkin. I love when your garden gets overgrown with a huge pumpkin plant (unfortunately mine never has, but the boy's backyard did a few years ago and it was fantastic!). I find plain roast pumpkin to be pretty boring, I like to spice it up a bit! As well as making a pie from this pumpkin, I wanted to try making some pasta. Just having it in the sauce wasn't enough, so I gave ravioli a go for the first time. Not only was it my first time making ravioli, I've never made pasta without the help of someone else before, and it turned out perfect! Yay! This is a long recipe, but it's really delicious!

The edges of my ravioli where way too thick. Try and press them out to be as thin as possible to help with cooking time.

You'll need...

Pasta dough

300g flour  - People say to use 00 pasta flour. I use regular plain flour. My pasta always tastes nice.

3 large eggs

pinch salt

a little extra oil and flour

Filling
150g Ricotta

1 1/2 cups roasted pumpkin
Small handful of grated parmesan or other salty cheese
1 egg, separated.
Pinch ground nutmeg
Pinch salt

Sauce
1/2 onion
2-4 cloves of garlic, depending on your taste
1/4 cup sage leaves
1 small capsicum, roasted with the skin taken off
1/2 cup pumpkin
big handful spinach leaves
a few sprigs of thyme

1/4 cup pine nuts
grated parmesan (to sprinkle over finished dish)

How to...

Dough
Step 1 // Measure out flour and sift into bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the eggs. I recommend cracking them into a separate bowl one at a time.
Step 2 // Mix with a spoon until about half of the flour is incorporated. Then you need to use your hands. If you don't want to use your hands, get a stand mixer. Use a flat beater attachment (not the whisk!) on a low setting until most of the flour is incorporated (about a minute). Then you can use a dough hook to kneed, but I find it's so much easier if you use your hands. It wont be sticky at this point anyway, the eggs already mixed in, and you really need to use your hands to get all the flour incorporated.
Step 3 // If your flour just wont incorporate, drizzle in some water (I use olive oil, because yum). Try mixing in no more than a teaspoon at a time. It will all come together, you just need to work it in.
Step 4 // Once it's all mixed together. Kneed for a few more minutes. It will start to get sticky. You might need to flour your bench. Polenta works best for this, don't know why. Then it's ready to rest while you get the filling sorted (or about half an hour).

Filling
Step 1 // Whack cheeses, pumpkin, egg yolk and nutmeg in a bowl. Stir. Easy!
Step 2 // Dust the bench with flour. Keep it dusted for each step otherwise the pasta will stick to the bench. Divide the dough in half. Roll each part out until it's thin enough to go through the pasta roller. Use the thickest setting and put each bit through about 3 times, folding it in half each time. I'm not really sure why you do this, but I've always done it. Roll it to the thinest or second thinest settings. You'll probably need to cut each piece into 3 or 4 bits.
Step 3 // Spoon the mixture onto half of the pasta sheets making sure each sheet has a matching sheet for the top of the ravioli, leaving 3-4cm between each . I don't think I left enough room. You could join half of the sheets together and have 1.5 rows per sheet instead of 2.
Step 4 // Use a pastry brush and brush the egg white around each filling ball. Take each sheets matching sheet and place on top. Press down between each ball, then cut between them. Press each ravioli so the filling can't escape, and it's thin enough to cook evenly. You can use a fork to create a nice pattern around each one, but it's not essential.

Sauce
Step 1 // Fry up the onion, garlic and sage leaves until the onions start to brown. Pop your pasta on to cook now. You might want to do it in batches of about 5-6 ravioli, so they don't stick together. I didn't.
Step 2 // Option - blend up the capsicum and pumpkin to a pure. Otherwise, chop up into very small pieces. Add this and spinach to frypan.
Step 3 // Add the thyme, spoon over cooked ravioli, sprinkle on some toasted pine nuts and grated parmesan and serve!

Do you like to make your own pasta? What's your favourite pasta dish?