Sweet Potato Ravioli

Sweet Potato Ravioli with sage butter sauce:

Pasta:

2.5 C all purpose flour
1 C semolina flour
Pinch of salt
4 eggs - lightly beaten

Sift flours and salt into a mound on a counter - make a well and add eggs. Incorporate eggs with your fingers and form gooey mess into a ball - kead for 10 minutes.

I found the "dough" to be to solid to knead by hand so I threw it in a stand mixer with a dough hook and added (a bit at a time) about .25 C water - the mixer got a dough ball formed (worth doing) but was not squishing it enough to get it smooth - so I kneaded the ball by hand for 10 minutes and let it sit for 15 - this worked very well - the dough was not too dry, but held up very well to rolling and cutting.

Break off plum sized chunks of dough and run through a pasta roller on decreasing widths to get pasta sheets.

Filling:

2 sweet potatoes - peeled and chopped into 1" cubes
1/3 C chopped cashew nuts
1 T brown sugar
2/3 C chicken stock
.5 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/5 tsp. thyme
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 cloves garlic

Boil the potato chunks in water in a small or medium saucepan for about 8 minutes - until they are cooked through like potatoes for mashing. Drain the potatoes, add the chicken stock and mash - add more stock or water if necessary to create a smooth consistency.

Mince the rosemary leaves and smash the garlic - put both in a mortar and pestle and mash into a paste - add the paste to the potato / stock mixture.

Mash the cashews in the mortar and pestle and add to the mixture

Add remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat - adding more liquid if necessary - (I suppose I could have skipped the mashing and thrown everything in a food processor this would have helped keep chunks out of the nuts - through the end result was tasty - perhaps next time) - also, taste and correct - I made this up as I went. Some grated Parmesan, or some ricotta might be a good addition.


Sage Butter Sauce:

Melt 2T butter in a small sauce pan and add about 8 sage leaves (I had some frozen and the were fine) cook for a few minutes and then add about 3T of white wine - I used a chardonnay that I then served with the meal). Strain into a small bowl - pushing on leaves to extract all sauce.


Assembling and cooking the ravioli:

grate a bunch of Parmesan cheese - at least 1 C grated

Take a pasta sheet (probably about 5 or five inches wide by 4 feet long - and place it on a counter (dry! and, I initially used dishtowels under the pasta - but this made it difficult to cut the raviolis out) place small (about 1.5 tsp) dollops of the sweet potato mixture on half of the sheet (thr other half will be floded over on top) - spaces with enough clearance around each to cut out a ravioli - fold the other half of the sheet over the dolloped half and press the dough carefully around each dollop so the tops and bottom sheet meet (be caseful not to rip the top sheets)

use an espresso cup or some similar round object with about a 1.5 " diameter - cut out raviolis (ther are many ways to do this - I will try a pizza cutter next time)

Do not stack the raviolis between cutting and cooking - I did and had a difficult time separating them (many were ripped)

the left over dough can be re-rolled.

Cook the raviolis in boiling water for about 3-4 minutes.

Remove from water with a slotted spoon and serve topped with sage butter sauce (above) and a relatively big mound of freshly grated Parmesan cheese - which will melt with the heat of the raviolis and the sage butter sauce.