Pasta Squared

Pockets of pumpkin make for a memorable meal

By Bambi Edlund

During a recent vacation in California I met a friend for dinner at a little Italian restaurant with a reputation for preparing authentic dishes. We ordered Tortelloni di zucca, bundles of fresh pasta filled with pumpkin, then tossed with browned butter and sage. Absolute heaven. And like the best pastas, it was simple—you could taste each individual element: the pumpkin, cheese, butter, sage and (most important) the pasta itself. It seemed a perfect victim for my next wing-it-in-the-kitchen adventure.

I decided to split the experiment into two parts, first perfecting the filling, and then working on the pasta, rather than risk a double-headed disaster. So I bought sheets of fresh pasta from Cioffi’s (on East Hastings in Burnaby). For added pressure (which I do perversely enjoy), I invited friends over to reap the fruits of my labour, and crossed my fingers that the flavour of said fruits would reside somewhere in the neighbourhood of their inspiration.

Part 1: Pumpkin (or butternut squash)-stuffed pasta is a common dish in northern Italy, so I turned up a number of recipes for the filling, ranging from dead simple (pumpkin, salt, pepper) to complicated (including egg yolks, crushed almonds and amaretti cookies). As usual, I read all the recipes, and then made my own amalgamation of them on the fly. I found the ideal combination without any false turns, and it was delightfully simple: pumpkin, pecorino romano, salt, pepper, nutmeg and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, I made a wise decision: try ravioli, rather than adding the challenge of attempting to twist and fold tortelloni. (I imagined myself swearing like a trucker as my finger poked through yet another belly-button of pasta, and I figured my guests would be much better served if I stuck to squares). I spooned little mounds of filling on one sheet of pasta, then laid a second egg-washed sheet on top, pressing the pasta together between the pockets. I sliced them into squares and sealed the edges. To a pan of bubbling butter I added fresh sage leaves, which went deliciously crispy after a few minutes. The cooked ravioli went in for a quick toss, and presto: a dish of pasta every bit as good as that swanky restaurant in Malibu.

Wow, this was going well.

Part 2: And then came the pasta-making.

About a dozen years ago, when pasta machines were all the rage, my sister and I bought my mother one that cranked out paper-thin sheets, with an attachment for cutting the dough into noodles. (In theory. Actually, it had never been used.) My mother spotted it on the top shelf of the hall cupboard. It looked like it was finally to have its day.

My first batch of pasta used half semolina and half regular flour, with eggs, water and olive oil. It required a half-hour of rest between kneading and rolling, so I mixed it together before going to pick up the pasta machine (and my sister) from my mother’s house. Halfway through the kneading, my phone rang. My sister. Did I have any industrial-strength painkillers? If so, bring them over. My long-suffering mother had reached up for the top-shelf-dwelling pasta-maker, and the extremely heavy cutting component came loose and fell on her toe. (Breaking it, as we later found out.)

Also: the handle of the pasta machine was missing, and although we could all picture exactly what it looked like, none of us could locate it. I managed to fit an old screwdriver into the hole and it turned the wheels, so we could still put the machine to use. It was nearly impossible to clean the rollers, but I did what I could and hoped it was hygienic. I cranked the first batch through…

And with the dough emerged a teeny, bright orange canary feather (the relic of a long-dead pet whose cage once hung above the pasta machine).

Obviously, I was destined to do this the honest way. The demon machine was discharged from duty.

But the dough was tough to roll by hand. It had a bit of stretch, which helped, but it tore easily and was quite rough. Plus it thickened up a fair bit in the water, making it tasty but extremely filling. Not what I would deem a success. I reluctantly decided to stick to the pre-made cheater sheets, but then something serendipitous happened.

Part 3: I told my housemate about the (mis)adventure and she handed me the book she was reading: Heat, by Bill Buford, a writer and former New Yorker editor who spends some time in Italy learning to make pasta the old-world way. It fell open to the chapter where the author tastes a pasta dish that changes him forever: pumpkin ravioli. And the ingredients in the filling matched my own.

The next chapter was about his adventures in pasta-making, learning to roll out the dough and stretch it around a rolling pin, and to secure one edge of it with his stomach to stretch it further. It also mentioned the fact that northern Italians do not use semolina to make fresh pasta dough—this is reserved for dried pasta (which is simply semolina and water, no eggs). After reading this small section, I was hooked on the book and determined to try another batch.

Turns out there are just two ingredients in fresh pasta: regular flour, and (good) eggs. This dough was completely different—after the full six minutes of kneading (tough work, but completely worth it; the dough’s consistency totally changes as it becomes an almost glossy, cohesive ball) and a half hour to rest, it rolled out just like it was supposed to. It could stretch forever without tearing, and I was able to coax it very thin. I decided to forgo the filling this time, rolled the sheet of dough into a long tube, cut it into strips, and cooked it for about two minutes in very salty water. I browned a bit of butter and sage in a pan, and I hate to sound overly dramatic, but I must say—it was the best pasta I have ever tasted. Deliciously simple, soft but with enough bite, not slippery or grainy or chewy. Just perfectly pasta-y.

Machine be damned—I have found my new hand-rolled comfort food.

Bambi Edlund is a devoted fan of trial-and-error cooking, and feels incredibly triumphant when her trials turn out tasty. She is now careful to wear shoes when reaching for items on high shelves