Christmas on a Plate

First, you select your butternut squash. This is actually pretty much the star of the dish. It is the main ingredient of the filling, and the filling makes the ravioli. We found these at Aldi a few weeks ago for 49 cents each. Wonderful price, hey? Mom and I bought a few of them.  

Then you choose your largest knife (not actually the largest, but a pretty decent one), and chop the ends off of the squash before cutting it in half.  

 And scooping out the seeds. Save these and plant them, and you can grow your own squash later (if you remember to plant them in the spring. That's usually my problem.

Peel the squash. I think that next time, I would bake them in the skin, then peel them. It'll be a lot easier.  

I didn't take many pictures of making the dough, because there were some issues with it. I wanted to make spinach pasta, and realized that, when making spinach pasta, you really have to be sure to remove all of the water from the spinach. The dough took a lot more flour than it was supposed to take.

All wrapped up and ready to chill in the fridge.

Finally didn't wear black while I was cooking, but, come to find, orange shows spilled flour just as much as black.

Honey and yeast mixed together for one of my favourite bread recipes. It's only 4 ingredients, and takes hardly any time to make. Tried to make it garlic bread, but didn't put quite enough garlic in it.

Colourful pasta dough and filling. Who wants boring food? I used the filling from this recipe. Didn't really want to do the gluten free dough, or the sauce from this site, but the filling looked amazing. And definitely was. I wasn't sure about putting nutmeg in the recipe, but it worked great.

  

Filling my ravioli maker. It made the job so much easier. I love it. Probably the best $1.50 I've ever spent at Goodwill. With the orange filling and green pasta, it kinda reminded me of Indian food on a banana leaf. 

All plated up. The sauce was simple. A can of basil-oregano diced tomatoes, and a can of tomato paste. Most recipes with butternut squash have a lighter, kind of sweet sauce, but I wanted the acid of the tomatoes to cut through the sweetness. It was already hard enough to find a recipe that did not have brown sugar in the filling. They're usually more like candied yam type filling. 

I looked at it on the plate, and it looked like Christmas. Which is my favourite holiday, so I don't mind that. 

The kitchen was a little bit of a mess when I finished. I need an assistant to come behind and clean up while I am cooking. It would make things much easier. Perhaps when I am rich :~P

 

I should have taken more detailed photos, but you get the idea. It was a delicious, and very different meal. I love to cook things that are a little bit different. Bright colours, different flavours. I like having the ability to cook normal food, but to have the ability to switch it up and still make it taste good is even more fun.

I have no desire to be a professional chef. Even just to do something like Masterchef is not anything that interests me. But simply to bring joy to myself and those I love by cooking is enough for me.