One of my favorite things to make from scratch is pasta. It’s pretty easy, and very social – a great group activity. I had never, however, tackled making a filled pasta from scratch because the idea was pretty daunting. But, if there’s one thing I learned from my old church in Philadelphia though, it’s that you haven’t really cooked until you make ravioli by hand. Recently I bought myself a ravioli stamp and thought I would give it a try. My lonely little ravioli stamp sat in my utensil drawer for a few months, until savory pumpkin week finally got me to try out a ravioli recipe! I have had pumpkin ravioli before – usually they’ve come in a package from Trader Joe’s – and they’re pretty tasty and all, but I wasn’t really sure how it would come out if I made my own. Turns out, they may be even better. However, I will warn you it does take some time to put these together. Figure about 30 minutes to make the filling, and another 30 to make and rest the pasta dough, another 15 to roll the sheets out in your trusty pasta maker. Then you have to assemble the ravioli. And then you have to cook the ravioli. The good thing though is that they are very freezable, so you can pull them out of the freezer any old night and impress people with your homemade ravioli.
The sauce is very, very easy. (If you wanted to, you could just buy the Trader Joe’s raviolis and put the sauce on it – it would be great I’m sure.) I did swap out the hazelnuts for walnuts, because well my grocery store just didn’t have any hazelnuts. And also, who the heck even knows what sorrel is? Well, I googled it – it turns out it kind of looks like a weed you might find in your backyard. Being that I couldn’t find that either at the local stores, I ended up swapping it out for my favorite leafy green, spinach. And it was great.
Pumpkin Ravioli with Walnut Cream Sauce – adapted from Marbalet via allrecipes.com
Ingredients
For the Ravioli:
- 1 and 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
- 1 large carrot, cooked and pureed
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- dash of nutmeg
- 2-2.5 oz parmesan cheese, shredded
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- half of one beaten egg
- approximately 1 pound of fresh pasta, rolled into sheets
Saute onion in a skillet over medium heat together with the butter and spices. To the skillet, add pumpkin puree and carrot puree and stir well. Remove from the heat, and immediately stir in the Parmesan, syrup and egg. Let cool completely prior to filling ravioli! Remember to keep the pasta moist while working with it so the ravioli stick together. Lay out a pasta sheet and place about 1 tablespoon of filling (this will depend on your stamper size) about 2-3 inches apart. Lay a sheet of pasta overtop, squeeze about as much air as you can out of the pockets, and stamp with the ravioli stamp around the filling. You may lay individually on a cookie sheet and freeze for later use at this point. To cook, drop into a pot of rapidly boiling water until the ravioli float – then they will be cooked.
For the Sauce:
- 1/2 cup walnuts
- 1.5 cups heavy whipping cream
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 pinch cayenne pepper
- 1 pinch ground black pepper
- salt to taste
- 1 x 10oz package of spinach, thawed and drained
Toast the walnuts at 400 degrees for about 7-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Place the cream, garlic, and pepper in deep skillet and cook on medium high until the sauce starts to thicken. When the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, add a dash of salt (to taste) and stir in spinach and half the toasted walnuts. Put the sauce over the ravioli and garnish with the remaining walnuts. Enjoy!
These look so good. I love all the pumpkin recipes and the walnut sauce looks delicious!