adventures in pasta

I have never made pasta before today, and I always thought it was an intensive process, with a chance of tears. And, history has shown that I have an inability to turn any type of flour into something edible.

But Geoff and I have been eating these tasty Cucina Fresca Roasted Butternut Raviolis, which, at $5 a package, are a torment. For those of you who don't know, I'm on a highly restricted food budget, and $5 for a meal is excessive. So, we decided one night that making it ourselves can't be that hard, and had to be cheaper. I was afraid of having to make the pasta myself, but I picked up some Bob's Red Mill Semolina Flour yesterday in bulk - $1.54 for 3 cups. Then the adventure began.


I got a couple packages of frozen butternut squash chunks, because fresh squash is out of season I guess. This worked out ok, because I got a couple pounds for $5, and I didn't have to cut up any squash (because that's bullshit). So I dumped it in a buttered dish with a healthy drizzle of olive oil (by healthy I mean not that healthy, probably), some salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of onion powder. (I didn't have access to a blender or food processor here, and I'm trying to replicate these CF pastas, which are very smooth. So I substituted.) I roasted this at 350F for some amount of time, I don't quite remember how long. Until it was mushy.


Meanwhile, I made one batch of pasta dough, according to the Bob's Red Mill instructions. And then I made a second batch, because one didn't seem like enough. (You may also notice that I do not have access to my fancy camera, either. Bummer.)



After an indeterminate amount of time (maybe 30 minutes or something), I mashed up the squash with some more onion powder, some garlic powder, a dash of nutmeg (for real!), half a cup or roundabouts of parmesan cheese, and some parsley flakes. And a little more salt, to taste.


So, I didn't have any fancy cutters either. I just used a wine glass. One thing I would do differently is roll the dough out super, super thin - it thickened up a lot more than I expected during the boiling.


I brushed some egg white onto this pasta round, dabbed a spoonful of squash mix onto it, and covered it up with another round. Easy!


And then I did that a bunch more times.


My mom taught me the "pressing the edges together with a fork" method.

If you note above, there are 28 (!) little raviolis in that photo. At this point, Geoff and I made a wager that the CF package has less than 28 raviolis. I won. He owes me ice cream.


The challenger!


Boiling these was like cooking some children that took me 2 hours to make.


But I have leftover squash! I would have used it, but I ran out of semolina flour.


I also have leftover raviolis!


I would had more leftovers if I didn't have to feed this behemoth of a man. But he enjoyed them :)

Ultimately, I think the "recipe" turned out pretty close to the real deal. It is definitely much easier to buy the package, and it's quite delicious, so I recommend trying them. But, if you have a lot of time on your hands on a lazy Sunday, making pasta is fun! And if you can follow my instructions-that-aren't-instructions, good job! You must be a pretty awesome person.