Ravioli con la zucca

I had a long week.  The kind of week that leads to breakfast in the Starbucks drivethrough, missed lunches, and very late dinners from fast food joints.  The sad part is that when you're this tired and this hungry, it all starts to taste good.

Thankfully the weekend has arrived and my life - and food - is getting back to normal.  I grew six cooking pumpkins this summer and they've been sitting on the porch for the past few weeks.  Halloween seemed like a good day to eat a pumpkin.  I sliced one in half, layed both sides face-down on a roasting pan, added about a 1/2 inch of water, and cooked it at 425 degrees for 45 minutes.  After the squash cooled, the skin pealed off really easily.  I scrapped out the seeds and strings, cut off the stem, and pured it with an emulsion blender.  The result was about four cups of pured pumkin.

So now what.  Tomorrow I'm going to make ginger pumpkin muffins, but tonight I made ravioli con la zucca, cheese ravioli (from the isle of frozen food at costco) with a creamy pumpkin sauce.  I checked a couple of websites for suggestions, including this one with great pictures, and then just sort of made things up as I went along.  I sauted 3/4 of an onion (left over from last week's CSA), added the pumpkin, gave the nutmeg and pepper a good shake, stirred in a splash of cream, and wrapped things up with a handful of fresh parsley from the garden.  (As an aside, my parsley has really taken off since the weather cooled off.  It's under a cold frame now as I was afraid it might drown with all the rain we've had.) A poured the sauce over the ravioli and topped it off with a handful of freshly grated parmesan.  Note that I didn't use any salt.  The ravioli and parmesan have plenty. 

The great thing about this dish is that it was really, really easy and fast.  I'd love to try the FXcusine.com recipe I liked to above, but I think pealing and slicing the pumpkin would be a lot of work.  Pumpkins a really hard squash.  I had a tough time slicing through mine before I roasted it.