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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.





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