Hello everyone, Jess here. 
This is hands down one of my favorite things to eat in this world. So buttery, so savory, and just an awesome combo. It’s a bit of work to make them, and I honestly haven’t even attempted them since the kids came along. Tonight I thought I’d give them a shot.
You can make these with just about any winter squash there is, but my favorite in these raviolis is a fresh Kabocha or a traditional hardened butternut. I’ve been saving a lone butternut and a roll of herb sage butter for months. The time has finally come to dig in!
The dough is pretty flexible, with the basic ingredients involving flour and eggs. My favorite recipe comes from my late mother-in-law and is immortalized in my home cookbook here:
“Loli” is of course short for “Ravioli” round these parts.
Mom’s recipe was for whole wheat pasta dough and included the following:
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 4 eggs
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Tonight my 00 flour was prepping to expire, so I wanted to use it up. The premise is the same however. Hollow out a little hole in your mountain of sifted flour.
Enter the eggs, and olive oil,if you’re using it.
After kneading for about 10 minutes, pop the dough in the fridge for about an hour wrapped in plastic wrap. Take the dough out and let it come to temperature for about 10 minutes before rolling. During all this, it’s a good time to work on the squash filling.
This butternut looks just as fabulous as it did several months ago when I first stored it in my basement. It’s amazing how these will keep so well! A roast at 400 for about an hour and it was ready to puree. I added some heavy cream to soften it a bit for the boys. Finely diced and caramelized onion or a sweated shallot make a nice addition to the filling also, but keeping this kid-friendly was on the agenda this evening, and they’re going through a plain phase.
Back to my raviolis… My Kitchen Aid comes with a ravioli roller contraption, but honestly I don’t have great patience with it. I usually just wind up making them using my hands. They come out meatier, and I like that. I do, however, use my Kitchen Aid pasta roller attachment. Only tonight did I remember that I loaned it to my Uncle Harry a few years back, so I ended up rolling the dough by hand, which took me quite a while longer than expected.
Here is the ravioli making in action. The boys helped me and we had all shapes and sizes happening tonight.
I have been saving this sage butter in the chest freezer for just this occasion. Tonight’s the night!
I can’t tell you how good this sage and butter combo smells browning in the pan. When you see the butter foaming like this, it’s on it’s way to browning. There will be little brown specks which you’ll want to try to leave behind in the pan when spooning the butter onto your raviolis. There were so many distractions in the kitchen tonight that some of the specks made it onto the final dish and my butter could have gone just a bit longer as well. Regardless, it’s a simple and killer sauce. If using sage butter from the freezer, taste your herbs to see how they held up. Sometimes, they’ll taste as fabulous as the day you picked them, and other times, you’ll want to pick them out before serving. Either way, the flavor of the sage has hopefully infused into your mixture and is great against the butter’s nutty flavor.
4-6 minutes in salted boiling water, and a quick toss in with bitter and you’ve got yourself some yummy Lolis! Freshly grated Parmesan (not pictured, we were running a bit late on dinner so I had snapped the photo too quickly) tops it off! Make a bunch of these at once, freeze some for later, but try them and it’s quite likely you’ll fall in love with them, too. Hope you like them as much as we do!