07 September 2009



Fresh chicken ravioli tossed with a sauce combining the creaminess of alfredo and the deep flavor and beautiful color of pumpkin. This is super easy to throw together and oh so yummy. I found it on Allrecipes, but it originally comes from Buitoni.

Pumpkin Alfredo Ravioli
Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
¼ cup shallots, minced
1½ cups mushrooms, sliced
10 oz. jarred alfredo sauce
¾ cup canned pumpkin
18 oz. refrigerated fresh ravioli, any variety you like

Directions:
Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add shallots and mushrooms and saute until tender. Stir in alfredo sauce and pumpkin and reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through.

Prepare pasta according to package directions; drain, reserving 1 cup cooking water. Thin sauce with reserved water until you reach desired consistency. Toss with pasta.

Makes 4 servings.


The above recipe is a bit different from the original. The original said to cook the shallots and white wine until it reduced to about 1 tbsp before adding the pumpkin and alfredo. I did this, and didn't like it. In the finished dish, the shallots were really kind of tangy tasting and it didn't go well with the creamy mellowness of the rest of the sauce. The mushrooms were my addition. I had some to use up (I almost always have mushrooms to use up because I always buy more than I need for recipes) and I thought they would be a good addition. That turned out well. The original recipe also called for chopped fresh sage to be added to the sauce towards the end. I did that and really didn't like it. The sage didn't have time to get soft and we kept biting into chunks of sage in the sauce. Yuck. And I didn't think the sauce needed sage flavor at all. So, I will definitely be leaving that out next time. I also increased the amount of pumpkin. It called for 1/2 cup, but I thought it needed more, so I added another 1/4 cup. Yummy. I never would have thought to combine alfredo and canned pumpkin, but it is so good! Great idea.

Make sure you remember to thin the sauce with the pasta water. I completely forgot this step and wondered why it turned out so gloppy! I didn't realize it until today when I was amending the recipe to post this. Oops! I can't wait to try this again so I can take better pictures of it!

About the ravioli: I recently discovered that Sam's Club is selling fresh ravioli and tortellini. I don't know if this is new, or if I just missed it before. But in any case, I liked it. I got Chicken and Four Cheese ravioli and that's what I used in this dish. It's different from the chicken filling in the Buitoni pastas. Buitoni uses ground chicken but Sam's was like cooked white chicken breast that had been ground up. That makes for a completely different taste. I like both, but since the Sam's is cheaper, I will probably end up using that more often. It comes in two 16 oz. packages. So even though this recipe called for 18 oz., I only used 16 oz. because I didn't want to open the second package and only use part of it. I froze the other package for later use.



Edited 10.07.10:
The picture doesn't match the recipe because the pictures I took of the recipe were absolutely horrible and looked like poop on a plate. I made the sauce again recently, and instead of putting it on ravioli, I tossed it with linguine as a side dish. And I didn't have mushrooms on hand, so it's pretty much just the pumpkin and alfredo sauce. Really good that way too. And this picture looks MUCH better, so I'm going with that!


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