Mushroom, Pecan Nut, Onion and Labneh Ravioli with Butternut and Sweet Potato Purée Recipe 

Making pasta by hand is a great activity to do with kids.

Ravioli is a firm favourite in our family as you can fill these little pockets with whatever your heart desires. For this dish, we embraced meatless Monday and made them vegetarian!

Ingredients for the Sweet Potato and Butternut Purée

• 4 Whole Sweet Potatoes

• 2 Whole Butternuts

• Olive Oil

• 250 ml Sour Cream

• Salt and Pepper to taste

How to Make the Sweet Potato and Butternut Purée

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

2. Peel the sweet potatoes and chop in even-sized blocks.

3. Peel the butternut, cut in half and de-seed. Chop in even-sized blocks.

4. Spread the butternut and sweet potato cubes over an oven tray, being careful not to crowd them. Use a second oven tray if needed.

5. Sprinkle some olive oil over the top, before putting it into the oven for 45 mins.

6. Blend the butternut and sweet potato cubes smooth in a food processor with a tub of sour cream.

7. Season well with some salt and pepper.

How to make the Pasta Dough

1. Use 100 grams of flour to 1 egg and multiply out to make as much as you need.

2. Make a little nest out of the flour on a clean kitchen counter.

3. Break the eggs in the centre and use a fork to break the yokes and mix the eggs, being careful not to break the flour wall. If you prefer, you can whisk your eggs before pouring them inside the well, but just know that that’s not how Italian Nonnas do it!

4. With your hands, gently mix the flour into the eggs and make it into a ball.

5. In the beginning the dough should feel quite dry, but the longer you knead it, the more sticky it should become.

6. Ideally, you should knead your dough for about ten minutes until the dough is smooth.

   • If the dough stays too dry you can add a little water by running water over your hands and then continuing to knead.

   • If the dough stays too sticky, you can dust a little flour over until you get to the right consistency.

7. Wrap your dough ball some cling wrap and leave it to rest overnight in the fridge, or a minimum of 30 minutes on room temperature.

8. Once rested, cut the dough into even sized pieces.

9. Whilst you are working on the first peace, keep the rest inside cling wrap to prevent it from drying out.

10. Flatten the first ball of dough with a rolling pin to just over a cm thick.

11. Use a pasta maker to roll your pasta, starting with the widest setting. Roll your pasta through at least three times until it passes through without resistance, then change the setting to narrow the space between the rollers.

12. You will need to pass the dough through the rollers two or three times for each of the first three settings, thereafter one or two passes will be enough.

Ingredients for the Ravioli Filling

• 2 red onions

• 200 g mushrooms

• 1 cup of pecan nuts

• 200 g of labneh (The Lebanese Bakery in Claremont sells great labneh!)

How to Make the Ravioli Filling

1. Chop the 2 red onions, and slice the mushrooms.

2. Fry the onions in a pan until golden, then add the mushrooms .

3. Mix the fried onions and mushrooms with the (roughly chopped) pecan nuts.

4. Your filling is done and will be topped with the labneh inside the ravioli.

How to Fill the Ravioli Pockets

1. Take your first sheet of rolled out pasta dough and add one heaped tea spoon of filling for each ravioli pocket.

2. Top the ravioli filling with some labneh.

3. The total filling should be about a table spoon amount, and you should have enough space between each to be able to make even-sized ravioli pockets. Use the pictures for reference.

4. Use a pastry brush to moisten the pasta sheet around the filling lightly with some water, so that the second sheet will stick together more easily.

5. Add the second pasta sheet on top of the first and use a ravioli stamp or ravioli cutter to make neat little pockets.

Ingredients to Make the Green Oil

• 500 g spinach

• Olive Oil (two parts to one part green chlorophyll)

How to Make the Green Oil

1.  Blend the spinach om a food processor.

2. Cook the blended spinach without stirring on the lowest heat possible.

3. Strain the cooked spinach with a muslin cloth.

4. Mix two parts olive oil to one part green chlorophyll mix.

5. Set in the fridge and separate oil.

Putting the Dish together

1. Pour a spoon full of (warmed) puree on a plate.

2. Add 4-5 pieces of ravioli per person.

3. To finish the dish, I also pan fried sliced mini corns and blistered cherry tomatoes.

4. Finally, a drizzle of green oil and some basil, and voilà, your Mushroom, Pecan Nut, Onion and Labneh Ravioli with Butternut and Sweet Potato Purée is ready to eat!

About Shawn Godfrey

Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.

Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.

It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.

On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).

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