Recipes Discovered

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter Sauce

One of my favorite restaurants in State College offers an ever changing seasonal menu. The last time Seth and I were there, one of the seasonal ingredients was butternut squash, and they offered it in the form of a ravioli. It was very similar to a recipe I had, except it was served in a cream sauce, and my recipe called for a brown butter sauce. Either way, it was delicious, and Seth and I had them again a few days after I had them at the restaurant.

The filling is fairly similar to the Butternut Squash Lasagna I made a few weeks ago, although I seasoned the squash with herbs de Provence before roasting it. After roasting it, I let it cool and mixed it with sauteed garlic and shallots, ricotta cheese, amaretti cookies, and nutmeg. Once the filling was done, I started assembling the ravioli. I used wonton wrappers for the pasta, which saves a lot of work. First, I tried folding a single wrapper over the filling, but I couldn’t get a good seal on the ravioli. I had much better luck just using two wonton wrappers and making a larger ravioli. Wetting the edges also helped seal the filling in. Make sure to keep the wonton wrappers covered with a damp cloth while you are filling them because they dried out pretty quickly. Once assembled, I placed the ravioli on a baking sheet and placed them in the freeze until they were solid. I then transferred them to a freezer bag. >>

To make the sauce, I melted butter in a skillet, and added walnuts, cranberries, and sage leaves. I let that cook for a couple minutes, until the walnuts were toasted and the butter started to brown. To cooked ravioli, I brought a large pot of water to a simmer, and carefully dropped the ravioli in. It only took a couple minutes before they were floating and ready to be topped with the brown butter sauce and Parmesan cheese.

I really enjoyed the combination of the sweet creamy filling, the tart chewy cranberries, and the crunchy walnuts. Seth preferred the cream sauce at the restaurant, but thought the filling in my ravioli was better. In any case, it was a very rich and delicious meal.