Butternut Squash Ravioli

Here's another filled pasta with butternut squash, but this time I used real pasta (although it was purchased, not home made) and changed the filling. In Bologna I once ordered a tortelloni di zucca and it clearly had no ricotta cheese in it, so I revamped my original recipe to mimic it. Then, because I made the mistake of buying the pasta sheets one day early, I made ravioli because they did not need the pasta to be as flexible as it would need to be for a folded pasta shape.

Ingredients:
1 1/2C cooked butternut squash
1C grated Parmigiano plus more for the finished ravioli
8 amaretti cookies
4 sheets of fresh pasta
1 cube butter
fresh sage leaves

Directions:

Cut the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds and wrap each half in tinfoil. then place is a preheated 400 degree oven for about an hour. You want to cook the squash until it becomes tender. As the squash cools, scoop out the flesh and place in cheesecloth to drain out as much liquid as possible. Most often you only need half a squash to make this recipe, so I place the other half in the freezer still in the tin foil and a freezer bag for later use.

Grate the Parmigiano cheese and add it to the squash. Then crush 6 amaretti cookies and add that to the squash, mixing the 3 ingredients together. Lay out the pasta sheet and place small scoops of the filling on it about 3" apart. Then cover with a second sheet of filling after you have brushed water in between the squash filling, to produce a better seal when cutting. If this part of the process had been successful for me, there would be photos. My ravioli cutter broke due to the immense pressure I needed to use on day old pasta. I resorted to using a pasta cutter along the edges of a glass with a 2.5" diameter. Nibbling the edges together would have been easier! Anyway cut the ravioli and make sure the edges are sealed, so the filling does not escape into the boiling water. Make the second batch and place the ravioli in boiling water until they start to float. Because my pasta was drier, I let them boil for another 5 minutes until the pasta was more tender. While the ravioli are boiling, place half a cube of unsalted butter in pan and melt it along with 6-8 large sage leaves. Crush 2 more amaretti cookies. When the pasta is drained and plated, drizzle the butter on top, sprinkle on the amaretti crumbs and add more grated cheese. Place a sage leaf on each plate and serve.