Butternut Squash Ravioli and Scenes from our Annual Ravioli Making Day

Each year we get together as a family and spend one whole day making homemade ravioli, I've written about it before and shared pictures of past years on my blog.

Before our day gets off and running we assemble all our tools. This year along with our ravioli we were also going to making cappelletti as well.
What are cappelletti? They look like little baby tortellini, tiny "little hats" of pasta each one stuffed with a savory filling, something I haven't ever made myself but had the privilege to learn this year by way of a master, my daughter-in-law's nana who was in for a visit.

I'm devoting my next post to our cappelletti making so for now, back to the ravioli!

The first thing we always do is to make all the dough at once before we get to rolling it out, it's always done in a food processor, fast and easy! Then we wrap each ball up and let them all rest for awhile before we begin.

We always make meat filled ravioli and the meat filling is always prepared in advance, this is Nana Lena's special recipe and all I can say is that it's fantastic!! It's a mixture of 3 different meats, cheese's, spices and herbs all of which have been passed through a meat grinder.

Along with the meat ravioli we also make cheese filled and I'm in charge of the filling for that. This year I got adventurous and also made a butternut squash filling for us to try.

Even the kids get involved, my two gorgeous granddaughters are here helping out.

Everyone usually settles into their own specific jobs and the ones that they're most comfortable doing.

We ended up making around 400 ravioli
that day along with 800 cappelletti, yes you heard me right, 800! Of course with all that hard work going on all day we had to nourish ourselves, so pizza's and salads were ordered for lunch along with some decadent cupcakes for dessert!

Here's the filling I made for the butternut squash ravioli, a mixture of roasted squash, buttery sauteed shallots, a touch of cream and lots of grated parmesan cheese all blended until smooth in a food processor which I did the day before and then placed in a piping bags. Piping the fillings out result in a very efficient, neat and all in all a much faster way of getting it all done.

When completed all the ravioli are placed single layer on sheet pans and then placed in the freezer until frozen, then eventually they go into freezer bags.

I recently took out a bag of the butternut squash ravioli to have for our dinner, I couldn't wait to see how they turned out!

They held together perfectly as they were boiling in the water, I love when they don't break open and not one of them did!

While they were boiling I made a quick brown butter and sage sauce, I just love the smell it brings into the kitchen.

I drizzled the sauce all over my cooked ravioli and then added more parmesan cheese.

It's hard to describe just how good this was but I'll try, cheesy, buttery, slightly sweet and creamy texture of the filling, nutty, earthy, decadent flavor of the sauce, and the fresh pasta? well what can I say, there's nothing like fresh pasta!

If you haven't ever tackled making fresh pasta why not give it a try, it's so perfect for the holidays!

Buon Appetito!