Vegan ravioli with pumpkin and ricotta
Vegan ravioli with pumpkin and ricotta
Autumn is here. The fields are heavy with pumpkins, there is a bit of a chill in the air and our cat, hardly ever to be seen in summer, keeps on sneaking into the house in search of a warm place to sleep. It usually ends up being Duncan’s jumper lying on a chair or a freshly washed kitchen towel 😉 . Cats, eh? ‘What are you so upset about, hooman, it’s just a piece of cloth!?’
My autumn thing is making dumplings, my ultimate comfort food. I spent most of my childhood sitting at my gran’s kitchen table watching her fingers crimp hundreds of little parcels of deliciousness. She was a dumpling queen and I’m determined to keep this dumpling tradition going.
Today’s dumplings aren’t what I used to eat as a kid though. They are a bit more refined. I combined my love for dumplings with my love for pumpkin and made a big batch (60 to be exact) of vegan ravioli filled with sweet and spicy pumpkin filling and tangy ricotta cheese I published a few weeks back.
These vegan ravioli are really special and even though, as any dumplings, they require a fair bit of work, they are so worth it! Plate them up for your guests and you’ll suddenly find yourself with lots more people asking for their dinner invite…oops…Don’t worry, with some practice you can probably pump out 120 of these every hour 😉 …
For vegan AND glute-free ravioli, see THIS RECIPE.
PASTA (for GF dough see THIS RECIPE)
- 300 g / 10.5 oz 00 flour* (see NOTES)
- 1/3 tsp turmeric
- ½ cup + 2 tbsp / 150 ml reduced aquafaba, (see NOTES)
FILLING
- 2 cups roasted pumpkin cubes (I used butternut pumpkin), 2 lb / 900 g raw
- 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for serving
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp lemon juice / apple cider vinegar, more to taste
- chilli flakes, to taste
- salt & pepper
- ½ portion vegan ricotta cheese** (optional, see NOTES)
FOR SERVING (optional)
- 2 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
- 1 lemon, zest
- chilli flakes
- In a mixing bowl, combine flour and turmeric. Add aquafaba and mix it into the flour. The dough will need a bit of water to come together (we used 2 tbsp / 30 ml), but be careful not to add too much as this will give you a dough that is too wet. Knead the dough for at least 5 mins and then set aside for 60 minutes under a damp kitchen towel so that the dough doesn’t dry up.
- Heat up 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan. Saute chopped garlic until soft and fragrant. Chop cooled pumpkin finely or blitz it in a food processor and add it to the garlic. Mix the garlic in well, season the mixture with salt & pepper, lemon juice and chilli to taste. There is no need to cook the filling as the pumpkin has already been roasted, so just make sure the mixture is well seasoned and set aside.
- Once the dough has had a chance to rest, take a portion of the dough (1/3 for example) and roll it out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface. Roll it out as thin as you can (2-3 mm), the thinner the dough the tastier the ravioli. You can obviously use a pasta machine to roll out your dough if you have one.
- Use a 5 cm / 2″ cookie cutter or an upside down glass to cut out circles of the dough. Place about a teaspoon of filling (I used ½ tsp pumpkin filling and ½ tsp of my vegan ricotta) on half of the cut out circles. Place another circle on top and drape it around the filling, taking care not to trap any air pockets inside. Seal the two circles of dough with your fingers. If you want them to look like mine, go around each raviolo and crimp the sealed edges with the end of a fork. Put the finished dumplings on a lightly floured surface and cover them with a kitchen towel while making the rest so that they don’t dry out. Continue in the same way until you have used up all the dough and / or all the filling.
- Bring a medium pot of water to boil. Once the water boils, place 5-6 ravioli (it’s important not to overcrowd the pot) in the boiling water and cook, on a rolling boil, for about 5 minutes. After the time is up, fish cooked ravioli out with a slotted spoon, shaking excess water off gently, and place them on a plate. Cook all the remaining ravioli in this way.
- To serve, sauté 2 cloves of garlic in a bit of olive oil. Baste the ravioli in the garlic oil gently. Serve with a sprinkling of salt, lemon zest and some more chilli if you wish.
**If you are not using vegan ricotta, you’ll not be able to fill as many ravioli with pumpkin filling alone so prepare a double amount of the pumpkin filling.
For this application, aquafaba needs to be reduced to resemble egg whites in consistency. To reduce it simply simmer it (with no lid on) on the stove until excess water content evaporates and remaining liquid becomes thick and ALMOST jelly-like (similar to egg whites). Once reduced, cool aquafaba down completely before using.
thanks!
I'm looking forward to trying more of your recipes. Thanks for the work you do!
I'm delighted to hear that you enjoyed these so much! I agree, making homemade ravioli is rather time consuming, but I'm happy to hear that you enjoyed the process as much as the end result. xx Ania
I am vegan and so is this blog so I am really not sure. I think you may be better off finding a regular recipe if you don't care for it being vegan. Ania
Do you mean cup normal aquababa and 2 TBS reduced aquababa? I've just reduced the aquafaba from one tin chickpeas and only got about 2 TBS left? How many tins would you need to get a cup?? Thanks
I mean 150 ml reduced aquafaba. I always cook my own chickpeas from dry, but the tins I have tried tended to have 1 cup of liquid (although I am sure it depends on the brand). Hope that helps! Ania
The correct dry to wet ingredients ratio is quite crucial in this recipe so that's perhaps your dough had a looser or tougher consistency than expected. As for the number of ravioli it all depends on how thinly you are able to roll out the dough and how big your ravioli are (mine were quite small) so that's not necessarily a problem. I am glad you enjoyed the taste! Ania
It would be nice if we had the amount of unreduced aquafaba to begin with.
thank you for the recipe !
I didn't even know how many of your recipes I had made till I typed it into my browser bar and past history popped up!
Everything I made so far has been an absolute hit, and I'm crossing my fingers that a cookbook is coming out soon!!
Your raviolis are to die for. Lovely colour, texture and presentation.
I am going to try with the mill fresh wheat flour I have. Let me see how it turns out
With love,
Bhuvaneshwari
That is a great tip! We might just try that very thing when we next have a bug infestation.
Hmm, not quite sure what to advise. I'm sure you can sub missing aquafaba with about a tablespoon of olive oil and some water to bring the dough together, but the dough won't be quite the same. It will still be good though - that's how I made pierogi dough, for example. Good luck! Ania
Thanks, glad you like the recipe. Vegan ricotta (in the ingredients list) is linking to the ricotta recipe, but here it is again just in case. Ania
I would not say so - at least not without some additive that mimics gluten - as you need gluten in the flour to make pasta. Sorry :( - I will be working on GF pasta at some point but for now, I don't have access to some of the ingredients needed. Ania
Thank you for the pasta recipe! So often, a recipe for vegan ravioli calls for egg-roll wrappers as the "pasta" element in the dish, and if I actually have a package in my freezer, it's generally been forgotten about in the mists of time and I wouldn't dare use it.
For Pinterest search purposes perhaps you could include 'fresh' or 'homemade' ravioli in your title? Also, I couldn't decide which image to post: the beauty shot,or the image showing the dough being made. Perhaps you could embed a small image of the pasta making process in one of your pins?
It's going to be a rainy weekend here in Coldstream, in the North Okanagan, Bc, perhaps I'll get a chance to try your recipe in the next couple of days. I'll let you know how it goes.
Have you tried to make the above recipe with a gluten-free flour?
Thanks!
No, I'm afraid I haven't yet as I have trouble getting some speciality ingredients here. I will one day, for sure. :)
We have a newly purchased pasta machine and ravioli makers as the kids were keen to make some again!
We have done spinach and vegan ricotta which was gorgeous!!!
I hate weevils in flour!
We now have everything in the kitchen in sealed jars, as if you get one bad bag of something, at least it only contaminates it's own jar!