66. Butternut Squash, Sage, and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Hazelnut-Brown Butter Sauce (p. 236)

I've been wanting to make pasta for a long time, but I must admit that I'm a little intimidated by the whole process. This recipe, however, is an excellent baby step into the world of homemade pasta.

The trick here is that these raviolis are made with packaged wonton wrappers instead of homemade pasta dough. And while this is a bit of a cheat, it's got the Gourmet seal of approval (it's in The Book, after all), and when they were cooked, I couldn't tell the difference.

This recipe begins from the inside out ... you start by making the filling. First, cut a two-pound butternut squash in half lengthwise and seed it. Roast it, flesh-side down on a roasting pan until softened. While that's cooking, saute a finely chopped onion with some butter and sage (breathing deeply to enjoy that great sage-and-butter aroma). After the squash has cooled a bit, scoop out the flesh, and combine it with the onion mixture and some grated aged goat cheese.

Then you're ready to assemble the ravioli. Start by putting a single wonton wrapper on a lightly floured work surface. Put a teaspoon of the filling in the center of the wrapper. Then brush the edges of the wrapper with water, place another wonton wrapper on top of the filing and seal the edges with your fingers. I took the optional step of cutting away the excess dough with a cookie cutter. This resulted in perfectly shaped ravioli, and I think that it also helped to seal them. Place the finished ravioli on a kitchen towel to dry slightly. Repeat 29 times. Yeah, this is pretty time-consuming assembly-line stuff. After about an hour, I only had 15 ravioli to show for my efforts and a seemingly endless supply of filing and wonton wrappers remaining. With time running short and a hungry, pregnant wife grumbling in the next room, I decided to cook what I had and stash the rest of the filling and wrappers in the fridge for later assembly.

The ravioli get cooked in boiling water for a few minutes until the float. I'm not sure how or why that works, but that's how you know when ravioli are cooked, they float. Anyway, I was really impressed with how well these ravioli held up in the boiling water. I was careful to keep the water at a very gentle boil so that the ravioli wouldn't get jostled too much. And only one of the ravioli's seams split during cooking, emptying its contents into the cooking liquid.

While the ravioli cooked, I made the Hazlenut Brown Butter Sauce. I put an insane amount of butter into a pan with some hazlenuts that I had toasted in the oven and chopped. (The Book's tip about rubbing the toasted hazlenuts in a kitchen towel to get the skins off really works!). In just a few minutes, the butter was nicely browned and it gave off a very nice nutty, caramel scent. Keep a close eye on this, because once the butter starts to brown, it happens very quickly, and your brown butter can turn to burnt butter in no time. I took it off the heat and set it aside until the ravioli was ready.

When the ravioli were done, I gently removed them from the boiling water with a large slotted spoon. I divided them into two bowls and poured a little bit of the brown butter sauce (this sauce is pure butter, folks, so a little goes a long way). The result? Absolutely delicious. The ravioli were tender and light. The filling sliky and creamy with the sweetness of the squash, the tang of the goat cheese and the earthiness of the sage. The hazlenut brown butter was rich, and had an excellent nutty flavor. A very sophisticated meal. This was a pretty labor intensive dish, but it was fun to make, and totally worth it.

So, a couple of days later, I took the rest of the filling and wonton wrappers out of the fridge and assembled the rest of the ravioli. After I let them dry out on a kitchen towel for a bit, I put them in a single layer on a baking sheet and then slipped it in the freezer. After a while, when they had frozen pretty well, I transferred them into a ziploc bag and stashed them back into the freezer. The next weekend, we didn't have any dinner plans, and we pulled a couple of handfuls of the frozen ravioli out of the freezer. Popped them into some boiling water until they floated, meanwhile cooking up some more brown butter. How did it taste? Just as good as the first time!

Date Cooked: October 19, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Not difficult, but time consuming
Rating: A-

56. Creamless Creamy Squash Soup (p. 99)

Last spring, I was obsessed with Bravo's Top Chef. And my favorite contestant, the hat-wearing, foul-mouthed Spike Mendelsohn, had an obsession of his own ... butternut squash soup. (I'm not kidding, watch the video montage below. Spike said "butternut squash soup" at least a dozen times in a single episode.) Ever since then, I've been waiting for butternuts to come into season so that I could satisfy my craving for squash soup. Well, at long last, fall is here and beautiful butternut squash (squashes?) are plentiful at the farmer's market, and I didn't waste any time getting one.

Even though this recipe from The Book is a lot less complicated than Spike's recipe, it's anything but boring. For starters, the recipe's name, "Creamless Creamy Squash Soup," lets you know right away that the folks at Gourmet have something up their sleeves. The creaminess in this "creamless" soup comes from the addition of potatoes which are slow-cooked, and pureed with the squash to give the soup a silky, smooth texture without a drop of cream. Other tricks include the addition of red pepper flakes, which gives the soup an unexpected kick of spiciness, and the unusual garnish of crushed Italian amaretto cookies, which, along with the drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, gives this comfort-food soup an air of sophistication that would make it at home at a four-star restaurant.


ICYMI: Butternut Squash Soup


Date Cooked: September 21, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

51. Roasted Butternut Squash and Spinach with Toasted Almond Dressing (p. 579)

Well, Fall is here, and for me, that means squash, pumpkins and apples, so expect to see a lot of them over the next few weeks.

The Downtown Manchester Farmer's Market will close soon, but not before the vendors have a chance to offer some great looking butternut squash. This one came from, of all places, Butternut Farm, in Milford, New Hampshire (the farm is named after the tree, though, and not the squash).

This recipe starts with roasting cubed butternut squash. While the squash is in the oven, it's time to make the dressing. Coarsely chopped almonds are cooked in oil over low heat for a while, presumably to toast the almonds and, at the same time, to infuse the oil with almond flavor. If that was the goal, I don't think it was fully achieved. It either needed more heat or more time. The almonds are strained out and reserved, and some lemon juice is whisked into the oil for the dressing. Finally, the squash, almonds and dressing are tossed with raw spinach.

I liked this dish a lot. The squash was excellent. The roasting brought out its caramely sweetness. The cool crispness of the spinach and the crunch of the almonds gave the dish textural interest. The dressing was pretty good, too.

When Teena made this dish, she wasn't a fan of the combination of the lukewarm squash and the raw spinach. This combo didn't bother me at all, but the next day, I had some leftovers and I threw the whole thing in the microwave, and I thought that it was much better hot with the spinach cooked.

Date Cooked: September 13, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

41. Summer Vegetable Succotash (p. 582)

I've been wanting to make this recipe ever since I came across it in The Book's Vegetables chapter. The only thing stopping me from making it is the fact that it calls for pattypan squash. And while I've been keeping my eyes peeled for pattypans at the grocery store and the farmers market for weeks now, they never seem to have it. So, I decided to just go ahead and make it while fresh corn (the other key ingredient) is still in season and plentiful, and I'd just substitute regular yellow squash for the pattypans. I'm glad I didn't wait any longer. This was an excellent dish.

The Book departs from the traditional succotash recipe by substituting edamame for the usual lima beans. The two beans are pretty similar in size, color and texture, but The Book notes that limas are starchier than edamame. That, and the edamame has a milder flavor which I think is a good change, not to mention the fact that edamame has more cache than limas. (Hipsters eat edamame; grandmas eat limas.)

The recipe is pretty straightforward. You start by simmering a pound of baby Yukon gold potatoes until tender and then cut them into bite-sized pieces. (Why do they need to be baby potatoes if you're just going to cut them unto little pieces? I'm just asking.) Then, and this is the brilliant part of the recipe, you saute the potato pieces in a little bit of butter and oil until they're nice and brown and crispy. Remove the potatoes and cook the squash and kernels from three ears of fresh corn in some butter until "crisp-tender." Add the edamame (which you've cooked according to the package instructions) and cook until warmed through. Add the potatoes and serve.

The finished dish is great. It's buttery and flavorful with lots of great textures from all of the different elements. The sweet, crisp fresh corn and the tasty fried potatoes are the real stars of the dish.

The Book doesn't say how this dish fits into a menu. Is it a side dish? If so, what do you serve it with? We ate it as a vegetarian entree (along with the Watermelon, Tomato and Feta Salad as a first course) and it was very satisfying.

Finally, I have to mention that the whole time I was cooking this dish, I couldn't stop thinking about Sylvester the Cat and his catchphrase, "Sufferin' Succotash!" I came across this clip on YouTube. It's a cute spoof on Iron Chef (they call it "Aluminum Chef") in which Sylvesyer is pitted against Aluminum Chef Chinese "Twee-Tee" in a battle with the secret ingredient: Corn! What do you think Sylvester made?



Date Cooked: August 10, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: B+