The Ravioli Experiment

I had loads of fun over the weekend making pumpkin-filled and butternut squash-filled raviolis. There’s something about mixing up homemade pasta dough and running it through a pasta machine until it’s thin enough for raviolis that is quite satisfying, especially when you realize that the more you run in through the machine (which further kneads it) the more tender the dough gets.

Unfortunately, I’m not yet a ravioli maker supreme. My early raviolis are likely to fall apart when boiled because I didn’t get the dough wide enough so a little filling is poking out here and there. My later raviolis, however, look good enough to serve for company. I’ll have to try another batch soon to see if I can move a step closer to perfecting that art.

In the meantime, I had roasted pumpkin left over that I didn’t use in the filling, so I made pumpkin dip with it. Yum! It’s great for dipping fruit or cookies into. The recipe, along with the two others I tried recently, came from “Simply in Season” by Mary Beth Lind. Besides the good recipes, the beginning of the book also lists fruits and vegetables by seasonal availability with storage, preparation and serving suggestions, plus nutrient information. Plus, they post some of their recipes online.

Two successes equal a first

I grew small, sugar pumpkins for the first time this year, intending to use them for a variety of things. The truth is I don’t even know if I’ll like eating them; I’ve never been a pumpkin pie fan. My guess, however, is that the only pumpkin pie I’ve tasted was made with canned pumpkin. Since pumpkins provide so much beta-carotene, as well as other nutrients and fiber, I decided to give them another try.

I also had great success with butternut squash this year, which I know I like quite well. I have more than a dozen of them stored so I can afford to be creative in experimenting with them.

For me, pumpkin success plus butternut squash success is leading to a day of making pumpkin ravioli and butternut squash ravioli to store in the freezer for winter. Jim gave me a pasta maker a few years ago and I initially enjoyed it, then lost my fascination. That was partially because I could never get my pasta to be as silky and tender as the good homemade pasta I ate when I lived in New York. So this week I’ve been reading up on pasta making in hopes that with more practice, I can have more success.