When you’re an Italophile, it goes without saying that pasta is a huge love. And when it comes to pasta, in my books nothing beats homemade.

Delicately spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, these Pear & Cheese Ravioli are the ideal pasta to make in Autumn when pears are ready for harvest. Combining sweet and savoury with the spices of Fall, I can’t think of a better recipe to share with you as we enter the cooler days of October.

Pear & Cheese Ravioli:

PASTA DOUGH:
Use your favourite pasta recipe. The basic egg pasta recipe I use is:
100 g ’00’ flour and 1 egg per portion, with an egg to flour ratio of 55g/100g.
So, if you were making the recipe for four people, you would use 400g ’00’ flour and 4 eggs.

If you’ve never made homemade pasta before, this excellent post from Jamie Oliver takes you through the process.

FILLING:
2 Bartlett pears, peeled and cored
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup ricotta cheese
½ cup mascarpone cheese
½ cup pecorino Romano cheese, grated
½ cup parmesan cheese, grated

STEPS:
1. Grate the pears. Add the pears to a skillet drizzled lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with the spices. Cook at medium heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

2. Combine the pears with the cheeses and season with salt and pepper.

3. Place a heaping teaspoon of the filling in the centre of a rolled pasta sheet, then gently fold the pasta sheet in half sandwiching the filling between the pasta. Using a pasta cutter or sharp knife, trim the ravioli, and set aside on a lightly floured wooden surface.

4. Cook the ravioli in gently simmering salted water until they float and become translucent, about 2-4 minutes.

If you would like to freeze the ravioli for use later, place cut pasta on a lightly floured parchment lined cookie sheet and put in the freezer. Once pasta is frozen, transfer into a large ziplock bag. Frozen ravioli will need around 1 minute of extra cook time, compared to fresh pasta.

To top the Pasta, you can go rich, or light.

For rich, I like to pair it with a decadent cheese sauce and for something lighter, I go with a Brown Butter and Sage Sauce.

Buon appetito!