Pumpkin and ricotta ravioli with burnt butter sauce could potentially go down as my most favourite meal ever. I pretty much feel like the greatest human on the planet every time I pull this recipe off. It’s delicious. Admittedly you need a pasta machine but I’d buy one just to make this recipe. It’s relatively easy considering how good it tastes and it’s so good I wouldn’t even bother ordering it out. Can’t improve on perfection.

Pumpkin and Ricotta Ravioli with Burnt Butter Sauce

Pasta:

• 2 cups of tipo 00 flour
• 4 eggs and
• generous pinch of salt

Pumpkin & Ricotta Filling

• 125g Fresh (from the deli) ricotta
• 2 Tb finely grated parmesan cheese (hands down our fave is Perfect Italiano Number 3)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg (I like to grate mine as needed—try it and you’ll never go back to the dried spice)
• 1-2 cups roasted pumpkin

Burnt butter and Sage sauce

• quality salted butter (I use Mainland organic sea salt butter for this recipe)
• sage- about 2 leaves per ravioli pocket

Method:

1. Pasta: Put flour in a bowl and make a well in the middle.
2. Crack eggs into the well, add the salt and whisk with a fork until all of the flour is incorporated and a dough forms.
3. Add a little extra flour and kneed on the bench until dough is soft. You can afford to be rough and do like the Italian Mammas do and give the dough a bit of a pounding.
4. Wrap in plastic wrap and leave to sit for at least half an hour in the fridge.
5. Pumpkin: While the dough is resting roughly chop and roast pumpkin until slightly caramelised and cooked through. 
6. Ricotta filling: Add all ingredients for the ricotta mixture to a bowl then cover.
7. Burnt butter sauce: Add butter and sage to a saucepan and all allow to cook until butter begins to brown and sage is crispy.
8. Assemble ravioli. I roll the pasta dough out to the finest setting (7) then cut squares, add a spoonful of filling and a piece of pumpkin, top with a square the same size and use a fork to seal all around the sides. I like my squares larger than the traditional size as seen in the picture.
9. Cook ravioli in a large pot of boiling water for about 3-4 minutes. Best way to tell if it’s done is to try one. They say when it floats they are done but in my experience, they float after about 30 seconds and they are not done…
10. Dress the ravioli with the burnt butter sauce and a generous amount of finely grated parmesan cheese.

My Tips:

• Roll the pasta dough out to the thinnest setting before joining sheets of pasta to make the ravioli.
• Use the largest pot you can find to cook the pasta.
• Make sure water is boiling before adding pasta (small amounts at a time)
• Pasta is ready when it floats but I wait for a little longer… then eat some to check because I’m not a professional haha.
• Have a slotted spoon ready to take out the cooked ravioli and a plate with a bit of paper towel helps to absorb the excess water.
• A squeeze of lemon can be nice, admittedly I think lemon makes everything taste better. And a side of asparagus, either blanched or as a salad also goes well if you need your greens.