pumpkin bacon ravioli with brown butter.

"And never since then have I let myself say, or even think, 'Oh anything,' about a meal, even if i had to eat alone, with death in the house or in my heart" -MFK Fisher

In this day and age marriage doesn't necessarily mean eating every meal together, in fact with my odd all-over-the-place work schedule and Nelson's juggling act of school/work/music, it's more of a rarity than a regularity. Eating alone to me used to be an excuse to break out a brick of cheese with aplomb, and in all honesty sometimes meals alone are still exactly that sentiment. But more frequently than not I've made meal time into a ritual worth repeating in the company of many or even just in the company of me. Last night was no exception to this rule. Nelson had a late class and was catching a show, and I wanted to make pumpkin bacon ravioli with brown butter and damn it, I was important enough to make this autumn fare just for little old me.

Start off by boiling a pot of well-salted water for your lasagna noodles and cook them about 10 minutes. Preheat your oven to 375 for your turkey bacon and then cook for 10 minutes. And warm a medium sized skillet. It's getting hott in here so....

While the skillet warms, add a little cooking spray and 1 teaspoon of garlic oil.. Add to the pan, 1/4 chopped onion and 1/4 teaspoon minced garlic. Season with salt and pepper and let cook together a good 7-8 minutes, will start to carmelize slightly.
remove from heat and add to your miniprep food processor. also add in 2 tablespoons ricotta cheese, 1 teaspoon parmesan, dashes of cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

also add in 3 tablespoons of canned, pureed pumpkin.
add a splash of milk and give the miniprep a good whirl till filling is combined and smooth. and now its time to focus on your delicious turkey bacon.....
tasting a few bites for good measure, chop up 3 slices into teeny tiny pieces. mix into pumpkin/cheese filling.
ok now its time to work with the lasagna noodles which is sort of a semi-asspain. technical term of course. you're going to end up cutting the lasagna noodles slightly and turning them into free form (read: spazzy-looking pasta) raviolis. i think most people would have used wonton wrappers or something already appropriately sized that you don't have to cook and then work with, but wonton wrappers aren't exactly a staple in our house. anyway, i cooked 3 lasagna noodles for about 10 minutes, removed each one from the pan, one by one, laid them out on a plate and put them in the fridge to cool. after about 5 minutes they had cooled and i could start working.
don't get too excited, this is the only noodle that actually stayed in one piece, therefore letting me actually decide how i would cut said noodles into shapes and fill. the other noodles were semi-shredded in many pieces and had to be "glued" together with some water before filling which resulted in these shapes.
and yes i am pan frying them. evil right? put it this way, our scale broke this week so i have no idea the amount of damage i am doing to my waistline, so i'm sort of pushing the boundaries more than ever. in actuality, they were sauteed in some pam spray, not really a big woop. and i found it necessary considering the pasta and filling were now room temperature and there was no way these pockets of pasta were going to stay together in boiling water. can you imagine? it would have ended up being pumpkin bacon water. delicious!
ok so while these sauteed for a few minutes on each side, i heated a smal pan, and added a little less than a tablespoon on unsalted butter on medium heat.
after about 5-7 minutes, the butter started to get sort of brown on the edges. swirly your pan a little and let brown another minute or so and turn off the heat. add dashes of salt and pepper and a teensy bit of water and give it a good stir. the butter will then immeaditely foam up in the pan, pour right over the plated raviolis.
the browing of the butter really made this quite nice, the butter becomes sort of nutty and thickens a bit, almost the better butter i might say. this is very rich though, i did eat the entire serving, but it took me the better part of an evening to finish it off. served with a glass of icey cold pinto grigio, it made for a very dignifed dinner for one. and i made the whole thing again from start to finish about 1130pmish when nelson got home from his evening. another dignified meal for one.