It's WORLD PASTA MONTH! To celebrate I'll be sharing recipes for everyone's favorite carb all month long. I don't have a whole life story to tell you at this point - let's just get into it.
Honeynut squash caramelle with bacon and maple brown butter
WHAT YOU NEED
Filling:
2 honeynut squash (1 cup cooked/mashed)
1/4 cup ricotta
1/4 cup grated parmesan
Dash of allspice
Salt to taste
Pasta dough:
2 cups flour
3 eggs
Sauce:
8 slices of bacon, chopped (about 1 cup)
1 stick butter
4-6 tsp maple syrup
20 sage leaves
1/2 cup pasta water
Salt to taste
WHAT YOU DO
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Halve the squash, scoop out the seeds, drizzle with olive oil + salt and roast for about 45 minutes or until fork tender. Allow to cool then scoop out the squash and mash.
Make your fresh pasta following the instructions in this blog post. While the dough rests, get your filling together and salt to taste.
Now, the fun part: let's fold some caramelle!
Roll out the dough 1/4 at a time until it's very thin - a setting 6 on the KitchenAid pasta attachment I use. Place on a well-floured surface and cut into even rectangles - the bicicleta tool (you can find it on my Amazon store) is super helpful. Using a piping bag (or a ziploc bag if you're like me and have misplaced your piping back for the literal millionth time), pipe about 1/2 teaspoon of filling at the bottom center of each square.
Roll the rectangle around the filling like a cylinder. Then, using your two index fingers, "trap" the filling by pinching down on either side of it. Lastly, pinch the corners surrounding the filling upwards to create the candy wrapper effect. Place the finished caramelle on a floured sheet pan.
Once the pasta is done (but not cooked) it's time to make our sauce: crisp up the bacon in a pan over medium heat, then remove. Get rid of the excess rendered fat.
Before moving on to the next part of the sauce-building process, let's get set up to boil our caramelle. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the caramelle and cook for about 3-4 minutes. While the caramelle cook, add butter to a skillet over medium heat (it can be the bacon skillet). Whisk occasionally until the butter browns (we can talk about the science/how-to behind this another time), add the sage leaves, and cut the heat. Add maple syrup and 1/2 cup of pasta water. Whisk!
Use a slotted spoon to transfer the cooked caramelle to the sauce skillet. Toss aggressively until all the caramelle are coated. Taste and make sure the salt levels are good! If the sauce is feeling too thick you can always add more pasta water and keep tossing.
Plate the pasta. If you must add more grated cheese, you can but it's absolutely not necesasry.
