548/1038 - Pumpkin and amaretto ravioli

With renewed vigour, I am pleased to be posting my second recipe for this week. Realising that my output has diminished dramatically over the past year or so, I am determined to increase the number of blog posts over the coming months. Of course I am secretly cursing February for having only twenty eight days as a well timed leap year would have seen February's total increase to a more respectable three. No matter; it appears this month will be an impressive one!  

Ravioli is a dish that I have recently discovered is easier to make than I thought. The fear of my hard work exploding in the pot stopped me from attempting ravioli for so many years but after my first successful attempt, I am now a ravioli fiend! I use a ravioli stamper (I have no idea if that's the real name for it) which both cuts the ravioli and also provides a fabulous seal. 

I will confess I made extra pasta dough (300g flour rather than 200g) as I knew I would be too nervous to roll the dough to the finest setting. I adore our beautiful pasta machine, which was a wedding gift and so has now been used and loved by us for twenty years. The only little quirk it has is that it tears the dough when the finest setting is used. It's no big deal, I get around this by rolling to the second last setting and then stretching the dough slightly with my hands. 

Playing to my fear of exploding ravioli, I may well have slightly underfilled each one and so ended up with a mountain of ravioli (hooray!) and also some leftover filling. 

Finished with a sage and burnt butter sauce (burnt butter makes everything good!) this was a very popular meal. My youngest particularly liked following his up with a ravioli breakfast and ravioli lunch the next day. 

Speaking of the "stamper", it was a very odd day in the kitchen as I rummaged through my kitchen drawer and found not one, but two stampers in there! I think I stood staring at them for a good five minutes, completely perplexed as to how the second one found its way into my home. Upon further investigation of the drawer, I continued to find items which had been inexplicably replicated. At this point I decided that either I was losing my memory or I was the butt of a practical joke. 

The house remains sufficiently amused. 

The mysteriously replicated utensils