Butternut Squash, Walnut, and Goat Cheese Tortellini
http://rebeccmeister.livejournal.com/864559.html

So. That tortellini-making over the weekend. I need to write down a few notes about it all. First, the dough. I used my mom's recipe for pasta dough, which goes as follows:

Take one package of Bob's Red Mill semolina flour, and add three eggs. Then add a tablespoon or so of olive oil, and a scant teaspoon or so of salt, and mix. Then start adding water, bit by bit, until everything starts to come together into dough. Don't be shy about getting your hands in there to give things a good squeeze and mix. Once you can, start to knead the dough. Maybe add a bit more water, if necessary. Plan on kneading the dough for around 10 minutes, until it's smooth and supple. Then, refrigerate for a while - at least 20 minutes.

Next, the filling: This time around, I took a small packet of goat cheese (it was on sale at the HEB before I left on vacation, so I popped it in the freezer and then thawed it for this recipe) and mixed it with roasted butternut squash business. I also added about a cup of some ricotta-like "farmer's cheese" that was on sale at Brazos Natural Foods, and grated in some romano cheese (maybe 1/4 to 1/2-cup?). Plus fresh black pepper, crumbled sage, and a hint of nutmeg. And some finely toasted walnuts - from sytharin. I gave everything a good mix or ten, and then I was ready for the next stage.

I am certain that any time I set about making pasta, I am going to spend that time thinking about my mother. For years and years, she made ravioli for our family for special occasions, to the point where she really doesn't want to look at the ravioli-making implements anymore and now we have to do it for ourselves. It happens, when one's children suddenly decide to be virtuous vegetarians and one is forced to come up with Thanksgiving and Christmas alternate dishes. I got lucky this time and happened to mention my pasta-making plans to a friend who has a hand-crank pasta roller, so she loaned it to me. Easier than hand-rolling it, for sure.

But boy did it make me miss the KitchenAid version. There's a certain monotonous rhythm to the hand-crank roller, when one is working by oneself. Chop off a piece of dough with a dough cutter, hand-flatten and shape it a bit, then adjust the pasta roller to the wide setting and crank it through. Pause, adjust the pasta roller to the next setting, and crank it through. Pause, adjust the pasta roller to the next setting, and crank it through. At this point, the dough will be long enough that it's no longer possible to roll it all through in one go. Instead, start it through the roller, then pause to adjust the dough coming out of the bottom so it doesn't stick to itself. Then roll some more, pause again to adjust the bottom, roll some more, let go of the rest of the dough up top and catch the dough underneath. Pause, adjust the pasta roller to the next setting, and crank it through.

Once the dough is thin enough, it's time for the next step. I happened across a tortelli recipe in a copy of Food and Wine while I was in the midst of tortellini-making, which divided up the workflow slightly differently, but probably takes around the same total amount of time overall, and seemed to involve a lot of waxed paper. There was a quotation across from the article about how making tortellini just takes time, and would-be chefs just have to deal with it, which made me chuckle internally.

Instead of rolling out all of the dough and then cutting out circles all at once (then taking all the scraps and re-rolling, etc.), I took each sheet of pasta, one sheet at a time, put it on a floured board, and cut out 5-8 circles. Then I took a pastry bag full of the squash filling and piped a teaspoonful in the middle of each circle. I took two fingers, dipped them in water, and ran a circle of water around the edges of each piece of dough, then folded the dough in half, over the filling, and sealed the edges. Lastly, I picked up each half-circle and curled the ends together to make a little tortellini. Once everything is set up, it takes about 10 minutes to make enough tortellini for one person's dinner. I made enough to fill two toaster-oven trays, and then tucked them in the freezer.

Ravioli-making might be marginally faster. It looks like there are a couple of methods out there, but they require more specialized implements that I don't own, and ravioli require more space for freezing (they have to be kept separated from each other so they don't stick together or to the pan they're on). My mom has a tray which is sized to correspond to the width of dough produced by pasta rollers, and which makes 10 or 12 ravioli at once. You roll out a bottom sheet, press a mold against it to make pockets for the filling, fill the ravioli, then roll out a top sheet, run water along the edges of the dough, lay the top sheet across everything, and then roll and cut the ravioli with a rolling pin. For the years she spent making ravioli, my mom always spooned the filling in by hand. When I finally had the idea to pipe in the filling, things got a bit faster, but it's still methodical work.

The whole process is really the best with at least two people involved, particularly with hand-crank pasta rollers, where one person feeds the pasta and catches it, while the other turns the crank.

Regardless, the end result is phenomenal.