Our pals at Rio Vista Olives sent us the incredible oil that we cook with in this post. Like everything that we recommend on our blog, we use and love their products, and hope that you will too!
The Story
This week it’s back to our favourite type of pasta: ravioli! You might remember our spinach and ricotta recipe, from way back in the early days of our blog. That was our original family dish, but we also use to make the occasional meat or pumpkin filled variety, which is what’s inspired this week’s pasta. A simple but satisfying mix of earthy dough, creamy filling, and crispy little bits of meat!
To try out a new flavour and texture for our dough, we mixed in a good amount of rye meal, and more olive oil than we’d normally use. Then we filled our ravioli with a smooth blend of baked pumpkin and garlic, and served them tossed through some crispy lamb mince and wilted greens. And you know, we reckon that it turned out pretty well.
When it comes to ravioli, the more hands the merrier. Particularly little earnest hands. So grab the gang and flour the kitchen table.
The Pasta
It all begins and ends with the dough. We wanted an earthier taste, so made this week’s dough with one quarter rye meal. Mixing it with doppio zero and bread flour left it workable despite the coarser rye, and the olive oil helped to keep it soft. Not to mention moisturising my dry, cracked hands.
Give it the usual 10 minutes of kneading and 30 of resting, and it’ll serve you well.
For the filling, simply roast the pumpkin and garlic, then discard the pumpkin skin and squeeze out the gooey garlic. Mash it all together with nutmeg, sage, and salt, then stick it in a piping bag.
You can always use different trays or hand stamps to form your ravioli, but I’ve used these open ravioli trays my whole life, and swear by them. Just give them a good dusting of flour before you lay out the bottom sheets, press lightly to mark out the tray before you start piping, and then roll the enclosed pasta until the cutting edge shows clearly through the dough.
Flip the tray over, give it a bash, and take a few photos of the perfect pasta that falls out.
Finally, to serve, fry up the lamb mince in a generous glug of oil, then once it’s brown and crispy throw the greens in to wilt. Toss the ravioli in and plate with a few salt flakes on top!
Much love, enjoy your pasta, buon appetito.
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Air tight container for resting
- Pasta roller and cutter (if not using a rolling pin and knife)
- Ravioli tray (or stamps)
- Rolling pin
Ingredients
Pasta Dough
- 120 g 00 flour
- 50 g rye meal flour
- 30 g bread flour
- 2 eggs
- 1 tbsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Vintage Range Augusto)
Pasta Filling
- 240 g pumpkin chopped into large pieces
- 1 head garlic
- Pinch of nutmeg
- Pinch of sage
- Salt to taste
Pasta Sauce
- 200 g lamb mince
- 120 g baby spinach leaves
- 2 tbsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Vintage Range Augusto)
- ½ tsp Black Sea salt flakes substitute with regular salt flakes
Instructions
- Combine dough ingredients in a flour well, combining into a ball before kneading for 10 minutes. Rest for 30 minutes in an airtight container, away from heat and direct sunlight.
- Roast the pumpkin and garlic in a 200 degree Celsius oven for 20 minutes, or until pumpkin begins to char. Remove, allow to cool, and then discard the pumpkin skin; squeeze out the garlic. Mash both together with a pinch of nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste, before loading into a piping bag with a medium round tip.
- Chop the dough into four pieces, and roll each through the thickest setting on the pasta machine a few times, folding over itself in between passes, before incrementally stepping through to a medium-thin setting of 6.
- Lay two sheets across a lightly floured ravioli tray, or out flat on a bench, and then pipe out large grape-sized dollops of filling.
- Lay the other two sheets over the top, and press down lightly. Dust with flour and then either roll firmly with a rolling pin if using trays, or stamp with a cutter if forming by hand. With a tray, flip it over and tap lightly to shake the ravioli free.
- Transfer to baking paper lined oven trays and refrigerate uncovered for up to one week. To cook, drop into lightly salted boiling water, and boil until al dente (or no white is left in the dough when cut open).
- To serve, fry the mince in the olive oil on medium-high heat for 5-10 minutes, or until crispy. Add the spinach and stir until wilted, 2-3 minutes.
- Add the cooked and drained ravioli into the frypan, and toss well before plating and sprinkling with salt flakes.
Good Lord! I think I’ve finally found my people! I haven’t tried rye in pasta yet, but I will soon. It’s time for pumpkin ravioli!
Haha, thank you! We certainly love our pasta 😊 it can be a little difficult to work with, but we’ve made a few successful pastas so far using various types of rye flour. Makes for a very pleasant flavour change! Hope that our recipes are useful, or at least provide a little inspiration, and look forward to seeing what you cook up 💛