1.5 cups roasted pumpkin, (I had these in the freezer from last summer’s CSA)
2 small heads of garlic, roasted
3-4 dashes turmeric
Salt and pepper

Using eggs, semolina and a splash of olive oil, I made a batch of dough which I had to bin due to its awfulness (way to much semolina somehow) and begin again. (Same recipe but more attention to consistency.)

After rolling each sheet of pasta, laying out the filling and covering with a second sheet of pasta, I used my handy dandy square cutter (available here) to shape the ravioli. This was a little messy at first because I began with too much filling. By the end I managed to achieve enough filling and a balance of pasta covering to make some very happy ravioli squares.

The ravioli was left to dry for 15 minutes, but could have done with longer as the underside wasn’t as dry as the top side, before dropping in boiling water for 4 minutes to cook.

As a sauce we smothered the ravioli with pesto paste from a tube. A short cut, I know, but it was still delish. Now I just need to find alternate fillings as there’s only so much pumpkin I want to eat in a winter.

Current temperature: here 19F/-7C, there 1C/34F

This is a pretty intense sauce and surprisingly made with tinned toms. It’s adapted from a recipe in The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy, a brilliant book Nic bought me because of the cool illustrations. You should definitely check out the geometry web page plus look for manskills on YouTube with their groovy vids to cook food to. For example Farfalle Pasta With Broccoli, Anchovy & Cream (Not that I can eat it, but it still looks delish.)

4 cloves of garlic, sliced
7.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
pinch of red pepper flakes
2.25lbs of chopped canned toms
0.75 teaspoons salt

Gently fry garlic until it begins to brown. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and then simmer gently, stirring frequently, until the sauce is nice and thick. This cooks for a good while and tastes better the more time you take, IMHO.

This recipe produces enough sauce to go with a pound of pasta so I’d recommend, after cooling, putting whatever sauce is leftover in ice-cube trays and freezing. Once the cubes are solid, remove them from the trays and store in the freezer in freezer bags. Next time you want sauce all you need to do is pull out a number of cubes and warm them in a saucepan as you cook your pasta.

Current temperature: here 21F/-6C, there 3C/37F

Beginning with, How to make pasta dough, I made one substitution and used semolina instead of regular flour. Working with two eggs, it did not take long to mix and kneading was a breeze. I even made use of a wood board we’d been given by Mutti many moons ago. The final dough ball just looked just like the piture at the bottom of the instructions.

While the dough rested, I set up my pasta machine. I purchased the machine a while ago at a local garage sale for a couple of dollars and this was its first outing in this house. I had to set up on the dining table as the counter top in our decrepit kitchen was too wide to clamp the machine to. I laid down some parchment paper to protect both the wood table top and the pasta.

The instructions, How to use a pasta machine, were easy to follow, though it turns out my machine counts from 8 down and I found levels 2 and 1 so super fine it was impossible to stop the pasta ribbon from tearing. The cutting rollers worked a treat and I used the wide setting since this was my first attempt and that seemed easier to deal with.

Fresh pasta, it turns out, really likes to stick to itself so my ribbons of pasta began to clump up before I realised what was happening. (So next time I’ll spread the lengths out after I’ve cut them.) Nevertheless I dumped my pile of pasta into some boiling water for about 4 minutes.

For sauce we winged it. We both used a little extra virgin olive oil. Nic then added some fresh parmesan while I added a little salt and freshly ground pepper.

It was way delish!

I will definitely do this again plus I’m now super keen to put my ravioli cutters to good use.

Current temperature: here 34F/1C, there 2C/36F