The first course of this meal was the Sweet and Sour Little Onions. Pealing the onions was by far the hardest part of this dish. The goal was to keep the onions intact, and it was very time consuming. Once they were all pealed I boiled them for about 20 minutes, so they were cooked but not falling apart. I then strained the water, and patted the onions dry with a towel.
I then caramelized the onions in sugar and balsamic vinegar and they were delicious!
I'm getting much better at making pasta dough, so it wasn't very difficult for me this time. When the recipe says add water or oil in small amounts until it is the correct consistency, I actually know what it means now!
After baking the squash coated in salt, I had to squeeze it in a cloth to remove all of the excess liquid. This was an important step because the liquid would lead to soggy cappellacci. I didn't have the appropriate cheese cloth, so I just used a dish towel, which made it take a little longer than it should have.
To make the filling I mixed the squash, nutmeg, parmigiano cheese, zest of a lemon and egg until it was a smooth consistency.
I used the pasta maker to roll out this dough, and my dad helped me to finally master it. He taught me that the cause of the bubbles in previous pastas I have made with this machine is that I start on too high of a setting. You need to start with the thickest possible setting, and work your way down to the thinnest on each strip of pasta you make. To form this pasta I made two strips of relatively equal size at the same time. On the first strip I placed small amounts of the filling spaced out across it, and then wet a circle around each pile with water. (So the second strip sticks better) I then used my make shift pasta cutter (the top of a tea can) to cut through both strips at the same time around each pile of filling.
To shape the cappellacci I folded each circle in half, folded the dough around the ball of filling in the center, and twisted the ends together to seal it. The first few times I tried I folded it the wrong way, so instead of forming a circle around the ball of squash, the dough was all on one side, and the pocket of filling was on the other. I realized that that's not what cappellacci looks like, so I started making it correctly.
To dress the pasta I made sage butter, which is just as it sounds: butter melted with sage in it.
After the pasta was cooked, I strained it and placed it in the pan of butter. This flavors in this dish reminded me of pumpkin ravioli that I have had at Zaza's Cucina (the family who owns it come from Emilia Romagna) only it was better because I had made it myself!
The first step to making the almond cake was baking chopped up almonds and sugar. I left it in the oven a little bit too long, and the melted sugar was pretty hard to get of the baking sheet, but I didn't burn it which was a success.
I have never been fully successful with my deserts in this project, and this one was no different. It tasted ok but it was crumbly and very hard at the same time. There was a lot of lemon zest in it, which added a lot of great flavor, but it was a little too sweet for my taste.
This meal was incredibly time consuming, but it was well worth it because it was all delicious!
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