What would October be without one of these guys?
The pumpkin is truly a New England fall ambassador that's everywhere this time of year, and luckily for us, The Babbo Cookbook has a few recipes that feature this fall icon. People around here put almost as much thought into picking their pumpkins as they do to choosing their Christmas tree.
Our recipe notes tell us that this dish is native to Mantova, in northern Lombardy. It's sandwiched between Bologna and Parma, two of the most influential culinary hubs not just in Italy, but of the world. Mario, according to his bio, spent an intense few years training in and around this area. It really must have had a huge impact on him because Mario even named one of his first restaurants after the nearby Po river. I can only imagine what cooking here would have been like.
Lune refers to the shape of the ravioli and it means 'little moons' in Italian. I've had ravioli filled with pumpkin and various other squash in my day, but what makes this dish unique is that he grates an amaretti cookie over the plated ravioli, along with Parmesan cheese. In Mantova, the amaretti are crushed and found inside the filling. How you go about incorporating the amaretti in the dish is personal preference I believe, but I wanted to see what impact it had on the overall taste. Texture wouldn't really be a concern, after all, many times I'll see the use of breadcrumbs in a pasta recipe.
Checking the ingredients list, we already know that we'll need to make a batch of the amaretti cookies. I saved a few from what we made in the last blog post, so that saves a little time. You could leave that step out, but on this blog we are replicating all of the recipes as close as humanly possible, so no short cuts!
The oven gets heated to 350°. The pumpkin is then halved and seeded, it gets drizzled with olive oil and placed on a baking sheet in the oven until very soft.
Once it's finished roasting and cools slightly, I scoop the flesh into a bowl and add fresh grated Parmesan cheese, nutmeg, balsamic vinegar, and season with salt and pepper.
You can tell by this familiar mound what my next step is. I swear I'm going to be an expert in pasta by the end of this endeavor. One word of caution when following his pasta dough recipe, it does tend to be a little bit dry. I believe that this is so because when he has us add squid ink, mint purée, or spinach purée to the egg/oil mix for other recipes, we're adding more liquid by nature to the flour, so those doughs would have the necessary extra moisture that's needed to incorporate all of the flour he advises to use. Otherwise if the basic pasta recipe had more egg or oil with the combination of those purées, it would make the dough too liquidy. It took some experimentation and contemplating to really get this. If you're just making the basic pasta dough recipe on page 102, I'd either add one egg or use a half cup less flour to avoid a really dry dough. And even though I have a sweet KitchenAid mixer, I still prefer to get my hands dirty and use the well method to make the pasta.
Once mixed and rested, I roll the pasta out on the thinnest setting of a pasta machine, and place a tablespoon of the pumpkin filling on the pasta sheet about every few inches.
I then roll out another sheet in the same manner and place it over the top of the pumpkin. You need to press around the filling to get the air out and seal the two sheets together.
This brings me to another interesting point that I thought I would bring up. In cooking school and working in other professional kitchens, many chefs are taught that the ravioli need to be sealed with either an egg wash, or a brushing of water with a pastry brush. The 'purists' would have you believe that water is the best option to use to seal the ravioli together because the egg wash would make the pasta too tough. But upon reading Mario's instructions, I noted that he doesn't use either to make his ravioli. It's not really mentioned in any of his fresh pasta recipes, it's just something that I discovered by reading in between the lines. So I tried it his way and it actually worked perfectly.
I then used a round ravioli cutter to shape the lune. But, after looking at my cuts, I see that because the ravioli cutter is flutted, the lune's edges looked more like rays of the sun than a round moon. So I cut the rest with a biscuit cutter and it looked better. (Hey I've got to get this right) Once they are shaped, I give each one a checking to ensure they are fully sealed. Otherwise, they will explode open when dropped in water to cook.
I then bring salted water to a boil and drop in the pasta.
As that cooks I heat butter until melted and foamy and toss in some fresh sage leaves.
When the lune are done, I add to the butter/sage, toss, and grate Parmesan cheese over them.
The lune are ready to plate, where they get more cheese and a grating of the amaretti cookie.
Wow. My wife and I both were impressed with this meal. Simple yet elegant, it was definitely worth all of the prep work. It really helped us celebrate and bring in fall in a proper way.
The pasta was tender and the filling was so flavorful. I love the flavor that the sage brought to the plate. Everything work in such a harmonious way. If there was anything that I would do differently, I would probably choose to peel and then dice the pumpkin before roasting and then purée the mixture in a food processor. Otherwise if you follow the recipe this way by scooping out the flesh of the pumpkin from the skin, the flesh itself sometimes tends to become a little stringy almost like a spaghetti squash. Again, it wasn't off-putting to either of us. It's just that most ravioli fillings that we are used to are often puréed to a smoother consistency.
I'm going to keep this fall theme going for a little while. As I said in the last post, there are so many really great fall recipes in here to make. Until next time...
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