Butternut and Sage Ravioli with Brown Butter

Making filled pasta by hand is one of those kitchen jobs that sounds intimidating and turns out to be mostly meditative. There is rolling and there is filling and there is sealing, and none of it is technically hard; it just wants an unhurried afternoon and a bit of attention. I make butternut ravioli when I want the cooking itself to be the point of the evening, when I am happy to stand at the counter with the radio on and my hands covered in flour. The reward at the end is a plate of something you genuinely cannot buy.

This particular combination, sweet squash and nutty brown butter with crisp sage, is a northern Italian classic for good reason. The sweetness of the roasted squash, the savoury hit of Parmigiano, the toasty butter and the slightly bitter fried sage balance each other so neatly that the dish tastes considered even though the parts are simple. It is autumn on a fork, though I will happily eat it any month there is squash to be had.

The Mantovan ancestor

The dish owes a debt to tortelli di zucca, the pumpkin-filled pasta of Mantua in Lombardy, which is one of the oddest and most wonderful things in the Italian repertoire. The Mantovan version leans sweet in a way that surprises people: the filling traditionally includes crushed amaretti biscuits and mostarda di frutta, a preserve of candied fruit in a fierce mustard syrup, so a single parcel can taste sweet, savoury, bitter and mustardy all at once. It is a relic of Renaissance court cooking, when the line between sweet and savoury was drawn quite differently from where we draw it now.

For a weeknight I stop short of mostarda, though I keep the amaretti, because those crushed almond biscuits add a subtle bitter-sweet backbone that plain squash lacks. Without them the filling can be a touch one-note; with them it has that faint intrigue that makes people slow down and try to work out what is in it.

The twist: a whisper of miso

Roasted butternut is sweet, and sweetness with no savoury anchor can become cloying across a whole plateful. My fix is a single teaspoon of white miso mashed into the filling. It disappears completely as a flavour and leaves behind depth, a low savoury hum that keeps the squash from tipping into pudding territory. The same trick underpins a good mushroom and taleggio risotto, where a little umami rescues a rich, mild dish from blandness.

Drying the filling

The one thing that ruins squash ravioli is a wet filling. Butternut holds a lot of water, and a sloppy filling both bursts the parcels and makes them slump. Two habits keep it thick. First, roast the squash cut-side down rather than boiling or steaming it, so it caramelises and drives off moisture instead of absorbing it. Second, scoop the roasted flesh into a sieve and let it drain for ten minutes before you mash it. The Parmigiano and crushed amaretti then act as a kind of blotter, tightening the mix further. You want a filling stiff enough to hold its shape on a spoon.

Making the pasta

For the dough, mound the flour on the counter, make a well, and break in the eggs and the extra yolk. Beat the eggs with a fork, gradually pulling in flour from the walls of the well until it comes together, then knead. Ten minutes of proper kneading is what builds the gluten that makes fresh pasta silky and strong enough to roll thin without tearing. It will feel stiff and reluctant at first and turn smooth and springy as you work; that transformation is how you know it is ready. Wrap it and let it rest for half an hour, because the gluten needs to relax before it will roll willingly.

Roll the dough in sections through a machine, taking it down one notch at a time to the second-thinnest setting. You want it thin enough to see your hand through, since ravioli are double-layered and thick pasta turns them stodgy. Keep the sheets you are not using under a cloth so they do not dry and crack.

Pipe or spoon teaspoons of filling in neat rows across one sheet, leaving good gaps. Brush around each mound with water, lay a second sheet over the top, and here is the step people rush: press out every bit of trapped air around each mound before you seal, working from the filling outward with your fingers. Air pockets expand in the boiling water and blow the ravioli open. Seal firmly, then cut into squares with a wheel or a knife and set them on a tray dusted with semolina, which stops them sticking better than flour does.

Cooking and saucing

Boil the ravioli in batches in well-salted water, gently so they do not knock together and split, for three to four minutes until they float and the pasta edges are tender. While they cook, make the brown butter: melt the butter in a wide pan and let it foam, swirling, until the milk solids turn the colour of hazelnut and it smells nutty and toasted. Watch it closely at the end because it goes from brown to burnt in seconds. Drop in the sage leaves to crisp, add a squeeze of lemon to cut the richness, then lift the drained ravioli straight into the pan and turn them gently to coat. Serve at once with plenty of Parmigiano and a good grind of pepper.

What goes wrong, make-ahead and swaps

Burst ravioli almost always come down to trapped air or a poor seal, so take your time at the pressing stage. A watery filling is the other culprit, cured by draining and roasting as above. If your brown butter tastes bitter, you took it a shade too far; keep the heat moderate and trust your nose.

The best news is that ravioli freeze superbly. Freeze them in a single layer on the semolina tray until solid, then bag them, and cook from frozen with an extra minute in the water. Homemade filled pasta on a busy weeknight, from your own freezer, is a quiet triumph.

Swap the squash for pumpkin or roasted sweet potato if that is what you have, and swap the sage butter for a simple tomato sauce if you prefer, though the brown butter really is the making of it. If you enjoy the hand-rolling, the same dough and technique open the door to gnocchi alla Sorrentina and a whole repertoire of made-from-scratch suppers well worth the flour on the floor.

A note on flour and eggs

Fresh pasta rewards decent ingredients, and the two that matter most are the flour and the eggs. Italian ‘00’ flour is milled very fine and gives a soft, silky dough that rolls thin and cooks tender; strong bread flour works at a pinch but makes a chewier, more elastic pasta that resists the machine. The eggs matter for colour as much as richness. Deep-yolked eggs, the sort from hens that have had a proper diet, stain the dough a warm gold that no amount of technique can fake, and they carry more fat, which makes the pasta feel luxurious in the mouth. If your dough feels dry and refuses to come together, hold back before adding water; eggs vary in size and a dry-looking dough usually comes good after a few minutes of kneading as the flour hydrates. If it is genuinely too stiff, wet your hands rather than the dough and keep working it. Weather plays its part too, and a humid kitchen may need a dusting more flour while a dry one needs a touch less, so trust the feel under your palms over any exact weight on the page.