Autumn Pasta

Fall arrived this past weekend so I wanted to get in the mood by using some fall ingredients.  On Sunday Julie came over for 'Pasta Day'.  We had been wanting to do this for a while to try out making some ravioli as well as use my new KitchenAid pasta extruder.

Basic Egg Pasta

6 c white flour
9 eggs

By all means you can cut down this recipe.  We made a huge batch because we were splitting it up and wanted to have a lot.  This was the ratio given by the pasta roller.  If you are mixing by hand, you are to put the flour on a board or counter in a hill, make a well, put the eggs in the well and use a fork to slowly incorporate the flour into the egg.  This seemed like a lot of work, so I jammed it all in the mixer with the dough hook attachment and put the speed to 2 and waited.  The dough came out kind of crumbly, it just required a bit of kneading and we were good to go.
For the ravioli sheets you need a pasta roller, or the attachment for your mixer.  They are so precise and make the job so much quicker.
Once you have the sheets made and laid out you can put together the filling!  We chose butternut squash and goat cheese.

Butternut Squash Ravioli Filling

1 1/2 c butternut squash (roast them ahead of time and keep the scooped out fleshy part in the fridge)
1/4-1/2 c goat cheese
1/2 tsp nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together in the KitchenAid mixer with paddle attachment or by hand.  As long as there aren't any lumps of squash or cheese.

Lay out sheets of ravioli dough and place a small teaspoon of filling.  With a pastry brush, brush an egg wash around each filling.  Lay a second sheet of ravioli dough over top and press around the filling.  Try to get all of the bubbles out.  Whichever tool you have to cut out raviolis is fine.  I have a press but you could even use a small drinking glass if you wanted to.  Lay each ravioli out on parchment lined sheet to dry out a bit.  You can freeze them on the sheet and transfer to a bag after.  Ours were eaten to quick for that!

Julie is doing all the work here!

To cook the ravioli I added to boiling salted water for about 4 minutes and scooped them out with a slotted spoon.

The filling is quite rich so I made a simple butter sauce with clarified butter, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper with a little bit of sage leave thrown in at the end.

After cutting out all of the raviolis we could, the edges were tossed into the pasta extruder, and voila, spaghetti!

I liked watching the pasta make itself :)