The Great Pumpkin is REAL!

Now that you know how to make fresh pasta, what should you fill it with? Pumpkin, of course. But...not the way I did it. In this post I'll show you about roasting and preparing fresh pumpkin, but there's a couple of problems with the recipe I made:

1. I did not love it.
2. I don't have permission to reprint it.

But it all began so beautifully!

Pumpkins seem to have become a hot item in the last couple years, mostly for seasonal household decorating, but I think people are also starting to eat them more. I've been seeing all sorts of crazy beautiful squash and pumpkin varieties in the markets the last couple seasons, in all different shades of earth tones, plus blue and white--and it is nice to know people are growing them, even if they aren't getting eaten. I have never tried one myself, because they are super expensive and who knows how it's gonna turn out? The one above is just a plain sugar pumpkin.

(As a side note, I was just in China, and they eat a lot of pumpkin and squash there too. The kind they used where I was, in Kunming, in the southwest, is a big, beige, lumpy type that I have seen here sold as one of the decoratives. One of the things they do with it is make a spicy pickle and it is one of the tastiest things I have ever eaten. I don't even know how I would begin to describe it. Like squashy-spicy-Chinesey. Ha ha. I promise I'll do better when I have to write about it for work. But here it is.):

Anyway. For your ravioli, or most any pumpkin endeavor, the first thing to do is cut the sucker open, scoop out the seeds (which you should save and roast because they are so tasty) and place on a baking sheet.

I find this activity fun, but it does take awhile and you need a good amount of strength to hack it apart, and it is kinda messy and awkward. My dog enjoys eating the stringy stuff that I scoop out, which makes cleanup pretty easy...just drop it on the floor! (I know...sick and lazy. I know.)

Then you put it in the oven at like...oh let's say 350 or 375. I have gotten super lax about my oven temperatures in the last few years. If I am baking, I do what it says, and it's a good idea to have a thermometer in your oven if you aren't sure it's accurate, but for something like this...whatever. Just put it in and let it go for like, an hour. Check it now and again. When you can pierce it very easily with a knife, and it looks squishy, it is done. Remove from oven and let cool. Now, remove the skin. You can either scoop the flesh out with a spoon, or slice the skin off with a paring knife, or a combo. Toss in a food processor and blend away.

When blended and smooth, some people will force the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve. I did not do this.
This isn't the whole amount, just what was needed for my recipe. The rest I saved to make pumpkin gnocchi...another post. Some recipes will say to hang the pumpkin in a clean dishtowel or leave it to drain in a fine strainer. I did this, but barely any liquid came out. Not sure I would bother next time.

So the recipe I used is supposedly very traditional Italian, and uses "mostarda di cremona," which is a sweet-mustardy Italian fruit condiment. I couldn't find it so I got this. There's a lot of Italian mustard fruit condiments, as it turns out.

I also was instructed to use crushed amaretti cookies, Parmigiano-Reggiano and some other stuff. Basically, I thought it was way too sweet, although I imagine the mostarda is supposed to add some kind of tang. It did not. (Though it is tasty on its own, I'd eat it on a turkey sandwich.) But this is a traditional recipe, and if you look up pumpkin ravioli you will find others that use the fruit-mustard and/or the cookies. This Martha Stewart recipe uses the cookies.

If I were making this again, here is what I would do.

About 1 1/2 cups roasted, blended, pumpkin puree

Maybe half a cup or more of good quality, whole milk ricotta, liquid strained out

tons of Parmigiano or even Pecorino Romano. Actually I think the pecorino would be better.

Salt and lots of black pepper to taste.

A lot simpler. Pumpkin really does have a lot of flavor that doesn't need masking or accenting with cookies and fruit. And I just don't like it too sweet. It lacked dimension. Cheese could provide that.

So you fill the ravs as I went over the last post, and then boil them for about 3 minutes. You don't want to crowd them and may not want to do the whole batch at once. To check for doneness, I take one out with a slotted spoon and nip off a bit of one corner. The corners are double-ply dough, and should be pretty firm. If the corner is too soft, it means your dough around the filing is WAY too soft. So be careful and taste often.

For sauce, pretty much what I always do for any kind of ravioli is just butter and olive oil cooked together with chopped herbs like sage and rosemary. Those two would be perfect for this. I don't think I would use garlic. When you put so much effort into the filled pasta, you don't want to bury it in sauce. Make the sauce in a pot while the ravs cook, and put them in with the sauce using a slotted spoon as they finish cooking. Draining is a little rough on homemade ravioli and can break them.

Here is my finished product. There is perhaps no food that I am more likely to gorge on than my homemade ravioli. And that's why the too-sweet filling was so ANNOYING. I still stuffed my face anyway, but it really should have been better.

Homemade ravioli is a great Christmas/festive thing to make. Rolling pasta is fun to do with family and friends. If this were a cheesy food magazine article, I would also mention something like "Pumpkins are like a shot of sweet sunshine from the cold winter earth." And you would laugh at me and it would be hilarious. But so good!

Crank it

I said in my last post that I had a couple of pumpkin recipes coming up. Well, here is one that is good for Christmas and celebrations in general (we always do Italian food Christmas eve): pumpkin ravioli.

But first, you need to learn how to make fresh pasta. Unlike pie crust, this is one staple I think I am pretty good at making. I've been doing it for years on my own, and even had a cooking lesson in Italy where I made it with a couple of actual teachers.

This post will be just about the pasta, and then I'll do another one for the filling later. This is the same basic recipe and technique for any kind of flat-shape or filled pasta (the only stuff you can make at home, really).

First, a word about equipment. The easiest and most common way to make pasta is with a pasta roller, which looks like this. I think this is the exact same one I have. There are also electric models. You can also make pasta by hand and/or with a rolling pin, though I've never done this. It is the more old-fashioned way and I think it yields a different texture. I can't advise on that method, but Marcella Hazan can if you want to check out one of her cookbooks. She really talks it up. She can also explain about different flours, which I'm not going to do. For the normal person at home, you can just use all-purpose, or half all-purpose and semolina. And you can throw in some whole wheat as well if you want to be healthy, though this does make the dough a little harder to work with.

First thing to do is this.
Put about 1 cup of flour on a cutting board or counter, and heap it up. Then carefully make a big well in the center, all the way down to the board. It's more like a donut of flour around an empty space than a crater. And really make sure the walls are solid. Crack two eggs into a bowl (this is easier, I think) and then pour them carefully into the well. You can also crack them right in.

Now, use a fork to whisk the eggs. As you whisk, draw in small amounts of flour to gradually thicken up the eggs. Work slowly and carefully. It is fun and satisfying to do it right. If you rush, you can have bad leaks and major egg runoff disasters. You can see I have one rivulet above, but the flour can generally handle a couple of those.

When the mixture is too thick to stir anymore, push the rest of the flour into it and start working it by hand. Have extra flour nearby. Push and knead the dough ball until it is uniformly smooth. You may have to add more flour, or, the ball may not be able to absorb all the flour. When the ball comes together and is relatively smooth, brush off the crumbs and bits from the cutting board and wash your hands.

Now it is time to knead. Opinions on kneading time vary considerably: I've seen/done 3 minutes to 20 minutes. Marcella says at least 8. Kneading is easy. You push the dough flat, fold it, and push again. It's not so exact, and it is a good work out. When done, the dough will be almost shiny, totally uniform, and not sticky at all.

You can now wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate it if you want to make your finished dish later, but you will have to knead it back to room temperature before using it.
So the machine has 6 widths. Divide the dough into quarters, set the machine on its widest setting, and place the dough on the roller as above. Push it in and crank it through. The first roll is very rough and looks really bad. Fold it in half, and put it through again. Do this a couple times, until it looks about like this.
If the dough is really ripping apart and full of holes, you will need to sprinkle it with lots of flour. Just keep rolling and folding and flouring until it is smooth. (If this happens it is because you did not knead long enough, or left it too sticky.)

Reduce the setting by one. Pass the strip through, then fold, and pass through again. It will start looking pretty nice, like this.

Now keep folding, rolling, and decreasing settings. A nice thing to do is to fold the dough with the edges coming in and meeting in the middle, if you get what I mean...This way, you have smooth ends. I guess I didn't do it this time, because my ends are uneven.

Warning: do not skip settings! This is evil and wrong and will backfire. I don't know how or why, I just know it is a terrible idea.

If you are making ravioli, go all the way to the thinnest setting. As you approach the thinnest setting, your dough may get too long to manage. In this case, cut it in half and deal with each part separately.

When it's done, the dough will look really smooth and lovely, like this.

Now, you can do anything with it. The machine comes with cutters for spaghetti or fettuccine size noodles (they're pretty self explanatory), or you could cut it by hand into super thick ribbons (which is AWESOME). You may want to do this now and consider this your practice batch.

For ravioli, use a pizza cutter, if you have one, to trim the ends, and then cut squares. The easiest way to do it, I think, is cut about 8 or 12 squares at once and then arrange them like they are in this picture. Then place your filling (only about a teaspoon) in the centers of half of them.

Before you cover them, lightly moisten the edges around your filling with water (just use your finger). Now put the top dough piece on--and this is another place where you have to work slowly and carefully. You want to do your best to get all the air bubbles out from between the layers. Try to kind of "cup" your hand over the center and work all the air out before pressing down the edges to adhere.
When all that pesky air is out, gently press down the edges to adhere. Do the ravs one at a time rather than assembly-line style: moisten edge, cover, press; now move on to the next one. When they are all covered, as above, start crimping. This is slightly fun. Oddly I don't have any pics of it. But all you do is take a fork and press the edges down to make a ruffled edge. I usually do both sides.

With scraps and irregular sized pieces, you can do stuff like this. (Of course, once it is cooked it is not quite as cute, but still fun to make and eat.)

That is all for now. Pumpkin filling will be next post.

Note: If you want to make a batch of fresh dough for noodles before making ravs, be aware that you do not have to let them dry--though you have probably seen images of hanging noodles (and on this very blog, in fact). You can cook them right away; I always hang them just so I have somewhere to put them as I am working. I think that's what everyone does. And they can hang for awhile, but become hard to handle if they get too dry.

And regarding shapes. The ravioli I made are probably big enough to be considered something else, like tortelli. You could also do circles (but this wastes dough, and necessitates re-rolling) or fill each square as above and then fold it up in a triangle shape (use less filling).

Kneading, chopping, cooking, eating

When I got home from the store with my groceries on Sunday at seven, I had a lot of work to do in a short amount of time.

First thing would be to start the pasta. How is homemade or fresh pasta different from store bought dry? Well, the main difference is that it is made with flour and eggs, whereas most dry pasta from a box is made only with flour and water (noodles and some fettucini being notable exceptions). It tastes lighter and softer but also springier than pasta from a box. The other difference of course is that it takes a lot longer than opening a box! I do it often, but usually for special occassions. It was interesting to just do it as part of my bang-it-out-get-it-done worknight cooking routine.

The type of flour used in pasta is debated a lot. 100% durum...semolina...type 00...there are so many terms floating around, and a good deal of misinformation and misnaming. I think its enough to put people off trying to make it, which is unfortunate, because at the end of the day you can get fine results using just all-purpose flour, and making it is not difficult. I won't go into the techniques here, but I learned do to it from Jamie Oliver and Marcella Hazan--they are both very opinionated and quite expert, and sometimes contradict each other. I actually find this useful...it forces you to go into it with an open mind and try new things. There is no 100% ultimate formula--and its supposed to be fun!

Anyway, I decided to use half all-purpose and half whole-wheat flour, to make it a little healthier, and to make a double batch. The doubling was a terrible idea. I heaped up a big mountain of flour, made a well in the center, cracked in four eggs and...they leaked out and made a huge mess. It was pretty sad. Egg running down the counter attracting roaches (I could do a whole blog about those little bastards!), my hands already covered in sticky dough...ugh. But I salvaged it. The dough felt firmer than usual because of the whole-wheat (and the volume I suppose), but I just kept kneading it and beating it to death for about 15 minutes. It's a good workout. Anyone who thinks pasta is fattening should try making it--the calories in probably equal the calories out.

I saved half the ball of dough for another time, and rolled out the rest. It made a ton and was perfect, didn't need any reflouring. Here it is, honey-blonde thanks to the whole-wheat. A nice departure from the usual platinum.

While the pasta was resting (before I rolled it out) I did a bunch of other things.

Granola: I mixed up all the stuff from before shopping with roasted pecans that I crushed by hand, shredded coconut, and rolled oats. Not sure about any quantities. Think there was about as much oat as there was everything else. I heated up some canola oil and honey, mixed it together, and spread it out on two baking sheets. 300 degrees for about 45 minutes, and the house kind of smelled Christmasy. Delicious! When I packed it in Scott's lunch the next day, I added chocolate chips.

So, I also had to consider the beverage side of things. We don't drink alcohol at home, but we do drink other bottled bevs, especially Scott: the new sugar-free vitamin waters, diet Coke, and my favorite, Topo Chico mineral water. But this would have to stop, or at least reduce. So I made a big pitcher of hibiscus tea, using Nile Valley tea bags. I just found the flowers in bulk, but had these bags on hand. I fell in love with hibiscus tea in Mexico (it is also called flor de Jamaica). I add a little sugar but keep it pretty mild. Scott loves it too. So we've been chugging that the last two days.

At some point in all of this I got the lettuce ready for the week. This is part of my usual routine but thought I'd share since it's a good trick. I chop it up and wash it and spin it dry, and then store it in the salad spinner in the fridge. It keeps it pretty fresh all week and is always ready for sandwiches and salads. A tip: the less you can cut it, the better, as it's the cut edges that turn brown. Isn't it pretty?

Finally, time for dinner. I had decided to do the pasta tossed with shrimp and collard greens. So first I had to peel and devein the shrimp, a chore about which I am extremely thorough. My father and I had a big fight about this on vacation once, as he doesn't do it. Lots of people and restaurants don't. If you are eating a shrimp that doesn't have a cut down the outside of its back, it hasn't been deveined.

(If you don't know what this is all about,

deveining is removing the shrimp's intestinal tract, basically. Pretty much a bunch of gross brown grit. It won't harm you to eat it, but sometimes you can taste/feel the grit, and I just simply refuse to eat any amount of shrimp excrement, no matter how small. Call me uptight, I don't care. My shrimp are always tender and NEVER gritty.)

So I did all the stupid shrimp, sliced the collards into ribbons, and chopped up about half the parsley. I sauteed about three cloves minced garlic in olive oil, then added the shrimp and greens at the same time.I had enough shrimp and collards and parsley that I only cooked half. There would be enough to make this again tomorrow. When everything is all cut up and ready to go, it's almost as easy as leftovers.

The pasta only had to boil for a few minutes. Tossed up half with the shrimp and greens, and let the other half cool uncovered before covering and fridging. We did add grated parmesan (wrong, I know...and it wasn't even Parmigiano Reggiano...hey that stuff is like 15 dollars a pound! I can't buy it every time) and I seasoned liberally with cayenne because I am a jackass who always craves the spice. It was great, both Sunday night and Monday when we had it again.

I finished everything by 10 pm. Outrageous to most, normal for us. (And don't tell me it will make me fat because I have lost about 25 or 30 pounds in the last two years and eat between 9 and 10 almost every night!)

Pasta with Collard Greens and Shrimp

Serves 2 twice, or serves 4

Medium pour of olive oil

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 bunch collard greens, sliced into thin ribbons and chunkiest part of stem removed

1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/3 (about) bunch Italian parsley, chopped

About 1 pound pasta of your choice, homemade if youwant

In a heavy bottomed pot big enough to hold everything, heat olive oil and garlic, cooking till garlic is soft and fragrant. Add shrimp and greens (or, if you like the greens softer, add them first) and cook until shrimp is cooked through, about 5 or so minutes. Season all with salt and pepper. Serve with pasta of choice, and grated parm if you want to laugh in the face of tradition.