vegan pumpkin and chestnut ravioli with crsipy sage

I love it when I get together with Kimberly from the little plantation and Silvia from salvia and limone as we always make them yummiest things. its so fun to cook and take photos with two like minded talented women. when I am at home in Devon I’m on my own most of the time so its nice to get together with people who have similar interests. this time we made something savoury and made these tasty little vegan raviolis. when Silvia was young she said her grandma would pan fry them for the children as it was quick, Silvia is from Liguria in Italy, a place I really really want to visit, the rolling pin we used to make the ravioli is typical of Liguria. you should be able to find one of ebay or amazon.. they were really tasty and it always surprises me how much flavour you can get in vegan recipes. we used miso to boost the flavour of these. instead of cheese we used ground almonds and weirdly it works so well. I made the dough with a mix of plain and wholemeal flour so they had a really lovely earthy taste, and if pumpkin wasn’t seasonal enough for you we also added chopped roasted chestnuts. after they where pan fried with sage we sprinkled the ground almonds over and a little balsamic vinegar which I am in love with. I use it in so many recipes. the other day my partner said to me he didn’t get my obsession with balsamic vinegar and it made me question our relationship lol.

this isn’t the first time we have cooked together we also made this vegan tres leches layer cake as well as these to-die-for cinnamon buns and we made a yummy focaccia that is based also on a Ligurian recipe,

INGREDIENTS FOR THE RAVIOLI FILLING:

1 small butternut squash, seeds and skin removed

a dash of olive oil for roasting

85g ground cashews or ground almonds (almond meal)

3 tbs of miso paste (we used soya free light miso from Tideford Organics, but dark miso would also work)

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

black pepper, to taste

100g cooked chestuts, roughly chopped

INGREDIENTS FOR THE PASTA:

250g plain flour

150g wholemeal flour

1 tbs olive oil

250ml/ 1/4l luke warm water

To serve:

a drizzle of balsamic vinagre and/or olive oil

a sprinkle of ground almonds (to taste)

fried sage leaves

To make

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F.

Peel and de-seed the butternut squash, place on a prepared baking tray and drizzle over some olive oil. Roast for 25 minutes or until soft.

Whilst the butternut squash is in the oven, prepare the pasta dough by combining the 2 flours with the salt, olive oil and water. Knead and combine by hand until a sticky dough has formed. You can sprinkle some flour onto your surface to stop the dough from sticking to the worksurface or your hands. Knead for another 10 minutes or until the dough firms up and stops sticking to your hands. Add extra flour if need be.

Set your pasta machine (we used one sold in IKEA) at it’s thickest setting. Sprinkle over some flour so the dough doesn’t stick to the machine and feed through the pasta machine. Repeat 2-3 times on a thinner setting each time until the dough is thin enough to make for a light ravioli, yet thick enough not to break on handling. Set aside

At this stage the butternut squah should be done. Remove from the oven, let cool slightly before mashing the butternut squash with a fork. Measure out about 1 cup of mashed butternut squash, place the cup of mashed butternut squash in a food processor with the ground nuts, miso paste, ground nutmeg, pepper and chopped chestnuts and mix until well combined.

if you have a ravioli rolling pin Lay out 1 thin sheet of pasta and spread the filling about 0.3 cm thick filling all over a pasta sheet, cover with a second sheet and press firmly the pin while rolling over the pasta. You can merge few sheets together  with the help of a regular pin then cover with filling and equal sheets merged together. Or you can work on each separately, fill and cover with an other sheet, then you can cut with a knife. if you don’t have a ravioli pin you can lay out on a 1 sheet of pasta and add the filling in quantities of 1 teaspoon at a time. There should be about 1 cm of empty space between each teaspoon of filling.
Next place the second sheet of pasta dough on top, press around your filling so the two sheets bond together, and use a ravioli cutter to create the desired ravioli shape you’re after.

Once the ravioli is made, place a large pan on a medium heat, add some olive oil and pan fry the ravioli, 1 minute on each side. Make sure the pan you use is quite large so you can fry about 20 at once. We did just that and made about 100 ravioli in 5 batches of 20.

Once the ravioli is done, pan fry the sage leaves (if using) and serve the ravioli and pan fried sage leaves immediately with the blasmaic vinegar, olive oil and sprinkle of ground almonds/nutritional yeast (if using). Enjoy!

 

Tip 1: You can use sweet potato or pumpkin instead f butternut squash. Just measure out 1 cup of cooked sweet potato or pumpkin and you should be good to go.

Tip 2: You can use different kinds of flours. You may have to slighty adjust the water/flour ratio though ;).

Tip 3: If you’re not vegan you can use ground cheese in place of ground nuts or nutritional yeast.

Tip 4: Haven’t got a pasta machine? You can also roll out the dough with a rolling pin. Just make sure the dough is thin enough.

Tip 5: We decided to pan fry the ravioli but you can also roast it in the oven or boil it in lightly salted water. Up to you.