Sunday, Jan 6th, 2008
Pasta stuffed with butternut squash puree is a traditional dish from the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy. It is typically served with a simple sauce of browned butter and sage.
I really did not follow any specific recipe here, more like a composite of recipes that I’ve done before. Homemade pasta is such a pleasure to make that I’ve made it many times and my ‘recipe’ is pretty simple and traditional. I use a ratio of 100gr of flour to each large egg. This particular recipe used 4 eggs and I used about 25% cake flour and 75% AP flour to make a more silky tender dough.
For the filling, I usually go by taste but the recipe is based on Mario Batali’s from the “Babbo Cookbook“. Roasted butternut squash is mashed and mixed with a good dose of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, some balsamic vinegar, nutmeg, salt, pepper and sometimes a tablespoon or two of honey if the squash is not sweet enough (this one did not need the honey).
To fill, I roll the dough using my Atlas pasta machine and cut it into rounds with a 2.5 inch biscuit cutter. Using a piping bag I put in about a teaspoon of filling in there, fold in half to form a half circle and then form into nice tortelloni. Boil it in water and melt some butter. Toss in a few leaves of sage in the butter, let them sizzle for a few seconds and follow them with the pasta.
You can serve this topped with grated Parmigiano cheese, but this time I used some homemade Amaretti cookies. Delicious stuff, and the project is off to a good start since Diana absolutely loves these. It’s good that I froze about another dozen and half for a quick dinner in the future.
