Ravioli to Noodle Soup

We got these humungous winter squash in our Mariquita Farms Mystery Box.

Mariquita Farm was my go-to for many vegetables at the Farmers Market, but they left the market to concentrate on supplying restaurants and CSA.
Just when I was about over missing them, I got an email from Julia that she would bring vegetable boxes a couple times a month to distribute at one of their restaurants where they deliver. Just make a $25 order by email. They call these deliveries Mysterious Thursdays, as they also offer a “mystery box” made up by Andy.

The squash sat outside for a week or so until one Saturday morning Carol just hacked up one of the big ones and baked it. Now what to do? We weren’t excited about making pie or soup or gratin.

SQUASH ONCE

Well, I hadn’t made pasta for a while, how about Squash Ravioli?

For basic research I tend to consult with Cook’s Illustrated online. We’re sure of finding a basic, proven recipe and we can go from there. Their Pumpkin, Prosciutto, and Parmesan Filling for Pasta looked good, interesting and easy. Just mix your baked squash with a little minced prosciutto and fresh sage leaves, grated Parmesan cheese, an egg yolk and freshly ground nutmeg.

The already made sheets are under the green towel.

For the ravioli part, I have several books that illustrate how to make ravioli. Basically, on a sheet of home made pasta about 4 inches wide, put down tablespoon size dabs of your filling on one side of the sheet, wet the pasta around the dabs of filling, fold the sheet over, seal around the filling with your fingers, and run a pastry wheel between the balls of filling to cut the ravioli. Cook the ravioli for 3 minutes or so in lots of salted boiling water and finish it with butter and sage in a large sauté pan.

We served ours with an Italian sausage (hot for me, mild for Carol), and a colorful composed salad of what we happened to have; roasted beets, cherry tomatoes and Romano beans. Yum.

SQUASH TWICE
Of course, we had leftover squash ravioli — what’s a good meal without good leftovers?

The next day, we had some of the leftover Ravioli in a Butter Sage Broth. The salad that time, leftover steak on a bed of tatsoi leaves with crumbled blue cheese and a sliced apple.

SQUASH THRICE
And yes, there was still more squash ravioli. A few days later, I conjured up a Squash Noodle Soup for lunch.

Squash soup recipes generally have sautéed onion, garlic, broth and white wine and maybe some curry and/or other spices. The soup is cooked and pureed.

My ravioli filling already had pureed squash, sage and nutmeg, as well as proscuitto and parmesan, so I just kicked in a little onion and garlic. For the noodles, I simply julienned the ravioli.

 

I suspected that once bathed in broth and heated, the squash mixture in the “julienned ravioli” would melt out of its pasta coat and thicken the soup, and so it did. And, guess what, the ravioli skins became noodles, just like that.

The resulting soup was good; rich, tasty and a nice balance of “noodles” to soup. How could it not be with tried and true ingredients in good proportion? Perhaps it could have been just a bit thicker, and I had some leftover squash filling to accomplish that. And cream never hurts. But as a bare bones experiment the results surely justified the method.

Yum, yum and yum.