Recipe by Illanique van Aswegen
Home-made ravioli is worth all the effort once you bite into the tender pasta oozing with sweet squash deliciousness.
Hubbard squash and sage ravioli with bacon butter
Ingredients
- Filling
- 375g hubbard squash, peeled and chopped
- ½ red onion, peeled and chopped
- olive oil, to drizzle
- 2,5ml (½ tsp) ground cinnamon
- 10ml (2 tsp) honey
- 75g goat’s cheese, crumbled
- salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Sage ravioli
- 400g cake flour
- 4 eggs
- 2,5ml (½ tsp) salt
- 24 small fresh sage leaves + extra, to garnish (optional)
- Bacon butter
- 150g streaky/shoulder bacon, finely chopped
- 15g butter
- 5ml (1 tsp) garlic, crushed
Instructions
For the filling, preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the squash and onion on a baking tray, drizzle with a little olive oil and roast until soft and tender, 20 – 25 minutes. Remove from oven and place in a food processor with the cinnamon and honey and blitz until smooth. Allow the mixture to cool before crumbling in the goat’s cheese. Season to taste.
For the pasta, place all of the ingredients, except the sage leaves, in a food processor and pulse until it comes together. Use your hands to gently knead into a smooth dough. Add a bit more flour if it is too wet or a bit more water if you find it too dry. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate to rest, 30 minutes.
To make the ravioli, use an eighth of the dough at a time. Roll it out on the thickest setting of a pasta maker. Repeat the process by rolling it out twice at each setting until you reach the thinnest setting. You should have a long strip of pasta, about 50cm long. Fold it in half lengthways so you can see where the middle is and then open it up again. Place 6 small sage leaves down one half of the pasta sheet and brush the sides with a bit of water. Fold over the other half of the pasta so you encase the leaves. Roll it through the pasta machine on the thinnest setting. Neaten the edges before cutting it into 6 squares. Cover with a damp cloth while you roll out the remaining pasta.
Roll out another eighth of the dough but, this time, don’t add any leaves. Simply follow the same process until you get to the thinnest setting on the pasta machine. Cut out 6 identical squares to the ones you made with the sage leaves.
Place 5ml (1 tsp) squash filling in the centre of a plain square of pasta. Moisten the edges with water and top it with a square of pasta with a sage leaf worked into the dough. Seal the edges by pushing them together with your fingers. Repeat with the remaining pasta and dough until you have about 6 ravioli per person.
Boil the ravioli in salted water until al dente, 3 – 4 minutes.
For the bacon butter, heat a pan until hot. Add the bacon and fry until it starts to crisp up, 5 minutes. Add the butter and garlic and fry for another minute.
Spoon the hot butter over the cooked ravioli and garnish with a few sage leaves, if desired.
Notes
If you wish to speed up the pasta making, then omit the process of rolling the sage into the dough. You can simply add a sage leaf on top of the filling before sealing each ravioli.
