Skip to main content

Sweet potato and pine nut ravioli




I am a massive fan of Italian food, particularly pasta. I decided to give making my own ravioli a go and fill it with my all-time favourite flavour combination: sweet potato and pine nuts.

I rolled my dough out by hand using a rolling pin and a lot of muscle-power. If you have a fancy pasta roller, even better.

For the pasta dough you will need:
250g 00 flour (has a really high gluten content specifically for pasta making!)
A pinch of salt
3 eggs
1 tbsp olive oil

A little bit of milk to seal the pasta

For the sweet potato and pine nut filling you will need:
1 sweet potato
1 red onion, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Glug of oil for the pan
A sprig of rosemary (fresh is preferable, if dried use about 1tsp as it's a much stronger flavour)
3 tbsp cream cheese
20g pine nuts

To begin with, pop the sweet potato in the oven at 180°C/356°F for about 40 minutes until it is nice and soft.

While the sweet potato is in the oven you can make your pasta dough; mix together the flour, a pinch of salt, 3 eggs and the oil until it forms a loose dough.
Turn the mix out onto a surface and knead until it forms a smooth dough; it took me about 7 minutes. Wrap the smooth dough up in clingfilm and pop in the fridge for at least 15 minutes (but not really more than an hour).

For the filling, soften the diced onion and garlic and oil. Snip the rosemary into the softening onion/garlic pan and let it cook until it's all nice and soft but don't let it brown. Tip the contents of the pan into a bowl. 

Once the sweet potato is soft, take it out from the oven, cut in half and scoop the flesh into the same bowl. Mash up the sweet potato and stir through the cream cheese and the pine nuts. 

Taste the filling to see if you need to add any seasonings. If you manage not to gobble the whole bowl that's pretty impressive.

Get the pasta dough out of the fridge and give it a quick knead. I find it so much easier pinching off little bits of the pasta dough to roll out, but if you prefer you can roll the whole lot at once. 

Roll the pasta dough on a cool, floured surface. Granite is ideal. Roll the dough until it's nice and thin before placing teaspoon-sized dollops of the filling on the dough. Paint a little bit of milk around each circle and place another rolled-out bit of dough over the filling; the milk acts to seal the two bits of dough together.


You can then use a cutter to cut out your ravioli. Continue until your dough or filling runs out. I managed to get 21 ravioli pieces out which will happily feed 4 people.  


At this point you can pop the ravioli in the fridge until you want to cook it. 

To cook, pop the ravioli in a pan of boiling water for 4-5 minutes; the pasta should still be al dente ("with bite"). I had mine atop rocket and with a few parmesan shavings. Yum.






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Frozen yogurt breakfast bowl

I feel as if Instagram and Pinterest are awash with photos of breakfast bowls containing ingredients I just can't get my hands on in Wales (mail order acai berries anyone?) I did want to jump on the trend bandwagon however and so have been enjoying frozen yogurt breakfast bowls instead (sprinkled with some  homemade granola of course - this batch has cashews rather than ginger in though).  I make this in my smoothie maker - anything with the ability to blitz frozen fruit will do. I can thoroughly recommend this as a breakfast to get you kick-started in spring! To make 1 portion of frozen yogurt breakfast bowl you will need: A handful of frozen berries - the major supermarkets do this really well 1 banana 1 tablespoon of greek yogurt A splash of milk From experience of multiple attempts at this, you need to order the ingredients in the blender so that the banana and yogurt are nearest the blade (to create a kind of paste) with the frozen berries ...

My new smoothie maker

Yesterday I was invited over to a friend's house for a "wii and juicing" party on the same night as the very first social of the year at university. It's obvious which option I went for. After having a glass of the juice she whipped up I decided that following our exam results, due to be released the following day, I would treat myself to a slightly cheaper smoothie maker that I had set my heart on. Unfortunately the results were delayed by three days, but I decided to buy the smoothie maker anyway because I was so desperate to try out some recipes! The two that I have tried out so far are a cucumber, mango and ginger beauty, the other a peanut and banana smoothie. Both are super duper. The quantities are for the 600ml smoothie maker I used; you may need to adjust accordingly! A lot of the quantities are halves of fruit BUT if you chop up the lot you can freeze it ready for the next time you want to make it! I'm excited already! For the cucumber, mango and...

Coconut and ginger granola

My standard breakfast most of the time involves oats in some way, be it porridge or granola. Recently I've really got into coconut oil and so this granola recipe uses it with ginger to make for a really tasty but quite subtly flavoured granola. I enjoy mine with yogurt and fruit but it would work well with milk too! The quantities are enough to fill a large Kilner jar and tend to last me a fortnight. This granola doesn't hold quite as well as the shop bought type as there is less sugar; it is more like baked oats. The ginger syrup is the substitute for the sugar added to usual granola recipes and I think it is a lot more tasty. To make a large batch of coconut and ginger granola you will need: 3 cups oats  1 cup nuts/seeds (I use a variety of different ones including pine nuts and sunflower seeds) 2 tbsp coconut oil 1 tbsp ginger syrup from a jar of stem ginger (you could even add some finely sliced stem ginger if you wanted!) Preheat ...