Butternut squash ravioli

I like to think I'm a decent cook, but some things I've never done particularly well, maybe because I've tried those things once or twice, they've gone badly, and I get scared away from trying them again and thus have no chance to improve. For example, bread (or anything with yeast) and pasta. This, my second-ever foray into homemade pasta (the first was some rather dense and heavy gnocchi, over a year ago, sadly before I decided to photograph a lot of what I cook), had mixed results. This all came about when I was browsing through "How to Cook Everything" one Saturday, trying to figure out what to cook that weekend, as well as trying to find ideas for what to do with the first butternut squash of the season I had impulsively bought at the store. I definitely wanted to make butternut squash soup, which I've made several times before, but I also had more unaccounted-for butternut squash, and I wanted a new challenge. I thus decided I wanted to make my own pasta, given that the first time I'd tried it hadn't turned out so well. This time I would make raviolis and I would use the extra butternut squash for filling. I guess these are actually more like free-form agnolottis than ravioli, but I digress.

Emboldened by Mark Bittman's description of homemade pasta and especially by his note about how the recipe is fairly easy (wrong!) and forgiving for beginners (wrong again!), I proceeded to make egg pasta. I made a well of flour on my counter, put my eggs in the middle, and started mixing. Eventually I had my dough together, which I gave some time to rest. When it came time to knead it and roll out, the dough was looking pretty great--smooth and elastic and pleasingly yellow, unlike dried pasta.

That happy elasticity came back to taunt me when it came time to roll out the dough. I would roll the dough out to a thin sheet, but as soon as I lifted the rolling pin away, the dough would start springing back to the center, getting thicker. There seemed to be no way to do this and time was of the essence, so I simply tried to roll faster and faster and cut circles out one at a time, filling the pasta with a dollop of simple roasted butternut squash, roasted garlic, egg and parmesan filling and then closing the circle in on itself to seal it. The second I cut out the circles, though, they would start springing back and so would get thicker. The surface area I thought I had on the cut out circle would get smaller, meaning that unless I put a tiny amount of the filling in the center, the filling would start oozing out the sides of the pasta circle. Eventually I got tired of them leaking (and I figured this would not go well when I went to boil them) and just put even smaller amounts of filling inside.

The more raviolis I finished and put on a cookie sheet, the more I noticed that they looked a lot like smaller versions of the squash and pork dumplings my family always makes around the holidays (Yum!!) It's the same basic priniciple, although the dough for the dumplings contains no eggs. (Let me rephrase that prior statement to say that my raviolis looked like smaller versions of the squash and pork dumplings I create when my family makes them over the holidays--while my parents use their nimble fingers to make nifty and neat little packages for the filling, I use whatever means I can to get the dumplings closed. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. Not like you can eat the prettiness of the packaging, am I right?!)

Not knowing what would go best with this pasta, I made two types of sauces. First was a super easy tomato sauce--super easy because it was one I'd made in the summer from peak of season heirloom tomatoes and stashed in my freezer for an occasion such as this, and all I had to do was heat it up. I only wish I'd made more sauce. The second was a simple olive oil and mixed herb -- sage, chives, and parsley-- pasta sauce. Both tasted great with the pasta. Although the herb sauce was a bit overwhelming for the delicate flavor of the butternut squash, this should be easily remedied by using a lower proportion of strong herbs/sauce to the amount of pasta. The sage was particularly assertive in this sauce. The tomato sauce was delicious with the pasta. The tomato flavor was in perfect balance with the butternut squash as it provided a nice bit of acidity but not an aggressive flavor like a thick jarred pasta sauce might bring.

So, there was a bit of frustration, but it was still very satisfying to be able to sit down and eat pasta I'd created from scratch. I certainly will be trying this again sometime--hopefully before another year passes!