We paired these easy to make pumpkin cavatelli with a sage brown butter sauce and spicy Italian sausage for the absolute perfect fall pasta.
In a post I made a few weeks ago for these pumpkin pancakes, I mentioned that I was disappointed to realize I only had one other pumpkin recipe on my blog (these pumpkin braised short ribs). I absolutely love the fall season, and I know it’s cliché, but that love includes the abundance of pumpkin flavored everything. So I’m attempting to make myself proud by coming up with an arsenal of pumpkin recipes. This week I’m using pumpkin in a savory way in these pumpkin cavatelli, and pairing them with another classic fall flavor, sage brown butter, as well as some spicy Italian sausage.
A FAMILY TRADITION
Last summer I posted this recipe for my great-grandma’s fresh pasta. At that time, my dad had recently come across some footage he shot decades ago of my grandma and great-grandma making fresh ravioli and cavatelli. The found footage caused a bit of a stir in my family. Everyone was so excited to get a glimpse into the past and see family members who have long since passed, or ones that some of us are too young to have ever met. And for those of us who love to cook, it was especially meaningful to watch the skilled hands of our ancestors craft a meal that brought the whole family together and absolutely embodied love. We all carried that sentiment into our every day cooking, and some of were especially excited to glean a few more tips for making fresh pasta dough (you can read them here) from my great-grandma.
Since then, my brother Ben, who already loved to make fresh pasta, has been doing so on a much more regular basis. So as the fall season rolled around, he knew he wanted to incorporate what he had learned from that video into a recipe that would both honor our families generation-old tradition of making fresh pasta while also incorporating a fall staple flavor. Enter these pumpkin cavatelli.
MAKING PUMPKIN CAVATELLI
Making fresh pasta seems like a daunting task, but when you break it down, it’s actually quite easy. All you need to do is mix a simple dough from flour and egg, shape the noodles, and cook them. And incorporating pumpkin (or any other flavor really) is just as simple. The pumpkin makes this pasta dough a little wetter than it would be otherwise, so you’ll need to incorporate a little more flour than you’d need for my traditional cavatelli recipe. But other than that, simply mix your pumpkin and eggs, incorporate it into the flour, and roll out your pasta.
We used a little cavatelli rolling machine like this to make these pumpkin cavatelli, but there are multiple techniques for making pasta noodles. If you’re old-school and want to channel your Italian grandmother, you can roll them by hand (here’s a great tutorial on how to do that). It’s easy enough to do, but takes a bit of time, and the machine is much faster. Or, if you have a pasta roller but not one of our little cavatelli machines, you can use that to make spaghetti or linguine noodles, which will taste just as delicious with this sage brown butter sauce. And of course you can use this base pasta dough in a million other ways. Pumpkin ravioli (filled with pumpkin and cheese) or pumpkin lasagna (layered with roasted pumpkin or squash) would both be especially delicious.
PAIRING IT WITH A SAUCE
Sage brown butter is one of our favorite sauces to make in the fall. Sage is a pretty traditional fall flavor; it’s usually used in stuffing for Thanksgiving. And when you pair it with toasty browned butter, it takes on an inexplicably warm and cozy flavor that goes perfectly with these pumpkin cavatelli. And then, just to bulk the dish up a bit and provide some protein and extra flavor, we seared up some ground spicy Italian sausage and threw that in with the pasta too. The slight spice of the sausage balances the slightly sweet and nutty flavors of the pasta, making this dish a perfectly rounded fall pasta.
Pumpkin Cavatelli with Sage Brown Butter
Ingredients
For the cavatelli:
- 10 oz semolina flour
- 10 oz double zero flour
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 1 egg yolk
- water, as needed
For the sauce:
- 6 tbsp butter
- 2 tbsp fresh sage, minced
- 5 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 cup reserved pasta water
- 1 lb hot Italian sausage, ground or removed from casing (optional)
- parmesan cheese, for seving
Instructions
For the pasta
- In a small bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree and the egg yolk.
- If using a stand mixer fitting with the paddle attachment, combine flours and egg yolk/pumpkin in the mixer. Begin mixing on a slow speed, adding small amounts of water as you go, if needed, until the mixture comes together into a ball. Knead on medium for 5 minutes
- If kneading by hand, mix flours and dump out onto the countertop. Make a well in the center of the flour pile and add the egg/pumpkin mixture to this well. Begin incorporating flour into the egg/pumpkin mixture, adding a bit of water as needed as you go. Knead the dough by hand on the countertop for 5-10 minutes.
- Check that the dough is sufficiently kneaded by cutting the dough in half. You should see many small air pockets inside the dough. If you don't see these, continue kneading.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap or cover and set aside to rest for at least 30 minutes. The dough can also be made in advance and at this point can be wrapped and left in the fridge for 1-2 days.
- Roll out your pasta, either using a shape extruder, a pasta roller for long noodles or ravioli, or by hand using the cavatelli method.
- Cook pasta in salted rapidly boiling water until the pasta begins to float, 3-4 minutes. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water for the sauce.
For the sage brown butter sauce
- If using sausage (optional): heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and cook the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces, until cooked and nicely browned, 7-10 minutes.
- In a large skillet with tall sides over medium heat, place the butter, garlic and sage. Sauté until the butter and garlic are beginning to brown, 5 minutes.
- Add the cooked pasta directly into the pan with the sauce along with the reserved pasta water. Stir to combine until the sauce is glossy. Serve with parmesan cheese.
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