PUMPKIN AND HAZELNUT RAVIOLI

A great combination of textures!!

Ingredients:
-Home made pasta dough (for this one i used durum wheat and 2 eggs for about a third of a pack of flour
-Pumpkin
-Toasted hazelnuts (or even better if you find fresh ones and you toast them yourself!!)
-Garlic

Average prep time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 2,5 minutes for "al dente"

Ok here we go!
Cook the pumpkin in a pre-heated oven until tender. Mince some garlic and heat it up in a pan with some extra virgin olive oil. While the garlic is heating up, remove the pumpkin from the oven and cut it into chunks. Now pour the pumpkin in the pan, salt it and sauté it in the garlic for a couple of minutes, then add just a bit of water and cover with the lid. Cook the pumpkin until tender enough to be reduced into mash by just using a fork. Don't worry if there are some small chunks of pumpkin... I actually prefer to leave some to add texture. Now you just have to grind the hazelnuts in the mixer and add them to the pumpkin mash. The stuffing for your ravioli is ready!

Now let's work the dough! Once you flattened down the pasta dough, cut it into discs using a glass: just press the upper edge of the glass on the dough and twist it a little bit. The size of the discs must be about the size of your palm. Each discs will make one ravioli so plan ahead for the amount of dough you will need.
Using a little spoon put some of the stuffing in the centre of each disc.
Prepare just one ravioli first so you'll understand how much of the stuffing you have to put in each of them.

Now the fun part! Once you put the stuffing in the centre of the disc, wet the edges in order to make them stick together when you close the ravioli. Fold the disc in half and gently press around the stuffing. Make sure the raviolo is well closed or the stuffing will leak out when you cook it. If you are happy with the shape you obtained, that's it! You are done!
But there are a lot of fun shapes you can create.
In this case I folded them into a "tortellini" shape: your raviolo now has the shape of a half moon. Grab the corners of the ravioli, pull them together and overlap them. Press the two corners together gently. The rest of the dough around the stuffing will automatically follow.

wine suggestion: either a Valpolicella or Corvina or a not-so-strong red wine

P.S.: A great sauce for this course is duck ragù!!

BUON APPETITO!