Herb-Laminated Chicken, Ricotta & Pumpkin Ravioli with Brown Sage Butter
Chicken, pumpkin & ricotta wrapped in fresh herb-laminated pasta, finished in nutty brown sage butter.
This looks like a restaurant plate and cooks like one too, but there is nothing mysterious going on. Every part of it comes down to controlling moisture. Dry pumpkin, drained ricotta, a yolk-heavy dough and gently poached chicken all pull in the same direction: a filling firm enough to roll into balls and a pasta thin enough to see the herbs through. Then the butter. Brown butter is a timing job, not a recipe step, and pasta water is what turns it from melted fat into sauce.
Ravioli fails for one of two reasons: wet filling or wet pasta. Fix the water and everything else is technique you can practise. The sauce is the same story in reverse, where starch and cold butter are what hold fat and water together instead of letting them split.
- →Egg yolks, not whole eggs. Yolks bring fat and emulsifiers and far less water, so the dough rolls thin without tearing and stays supple under the machine. It feels stiff at first because there is less liquid in it, so give it time before you decide it needs a splash of water.
- →Roasting drives water out of pumpkin, steaming puts it in. Uncovered, no water, hot oven. You want purée that holds its shape on the spoon, because any moisture left in it goes straight into the filling and then into the pasta seal.
- →Ricotta must be drained. Ricotta is a wet cheese by design. Undrained, it weeps as the ravioli cooks and you get a burst seam and a puddle on the plate.
- →Poaching sets chicken protein gently. Taken to 75°C in barely moving water and cooled in its own liquid, the muscle fibres stay relaxed and hold moisture. Boiling it hard squeezes them shut and gives you dry, chalky filling.
- →Egg yolk and Parmigiano bind the filling. The yolk sets slightly as the ravioli cooks and the cheese brings protein and salt, so the filling firms instead of turning to slurry.
- →Brown butter carries on cooking off the heat. Milk solids in a hot pan have enough residual heat to go from nutty to burnt in seconds. Pull it a shade early and a splash of pasta water halts it dead.
- →Starchy water plus cold butter equals sauce. Pasta starch stabilises the emulsion and cold butter added off a fierce boil melts slowly enough to stay emulsified, giving you a glossy sauce that clings rather than a butter puddle.
Common Mistakes
- ✗Wet filling. Undrained ricotta or loose pumpkin purée will burst the seams in the pot. If the mix will not hold a ball, it is not ready to go in the pasta.
- ✗Boiling the chicken instead of poaching it. Hard bubbles tighten the fibres and give you dry, chalky filling no amount of ricotta will rescue.
- ✗Trapping air in the ravioli. Air expands in boiling water and pops your seal. Work it out from the centre before you press the edges.
- ✗Leaving pasta sheets uncovered. A dried surface will not stick to itself, so the seal fails right when you need it.
- ✗Drowning the sheets in water to seal them. Too much water makes the layers slide instead of grip.
- ✗Taking the brown butter off when it looks right. By the time it is plated it is a shade darker and bitter with it.
- ✗Draining the ravioli in a colander. You throw away the pasta water that makes the sauce, and delicate parcels do not enjoy being tipped about.
Tips & Tricks
- →Poach the chicken the day before and leave it in the liquor in the fridge. Better texture, and it splits the job in two.
- →Weigh the pumpkin purée after it has cooled. Warm purée reads differently on the scales and behaves differently in the filling.
- →Strip the herbs to flat leaves with no stalks. Anything thick will tent the pasta and stop the sheets bonding.
- →Roll the laminated sheet one setting thinner than feels sensible. The herbs only show properly through thin pasta.
- →Pipe or scoop the filling with a small ice cream scoop for even parcels and even cooking.
- →Keep a semolina-dusted tray beside you, never flour. Flour goes gluey, semolina stays gritty and keeps them loose.
- →Cook a single test ravioli first. Better to find a seal problem with one than with forty.
- →Ladle out a mug of pasta water before you lift the ravioli. You will always want more of it than you think.
- →Meringue insurance: Those leftover egg whites are gold for meringues — keep them in a jar in the fridge or freeze them in small batches. Just be ruthless about keeping yolk, oil, or grease out: the slightest fat will stop them whipping. I freeze mine in an ice-cube tray so I always know exactly how many whites I have.
Flavour Twists
Toss a small handful of toasted, crushed hazelnuts into the butter with the sage. Nutty on nutty, and a texture change against soft pasta.
Crush one amaretti biscuit into the filling for the classic northern Italian bittersweet edge with the pumpkin. One biscuit, not three.
A fine grating of lemon zest over the plate at the end. Cuts the butter without turning it into a lemon sauce.
Fry a few extra sage leaves in the butter early, lift them out on kitchen paper and scatter over at the end for crunch.
Substitutions
- Chicken breast→ Poached chicken thighRicher and more forgiving. Poach a little longer to 75°C.
- Pumpkin→ Butternut squashSame treatment, roast hard and dry it out.
- Ricotta→ Well-drained curd cheese or sieved cottage cheeseDrain harder than you think.
- Parmigiano Reggiano→ Grana Padano or a hard pecorinoPecorino is saltier, so pull back on added salt.
- 00 flour→ Plain flourSlightly chewier sheet, roll a touch thinner.
- Sage→ Rosemary, used sparinglyRosemary is far louder — a small sprig, not a handful.
Filled ravioli are best cooked the day they are made. Uncooked, they will hold on a semolina-dusted tray in the fridge, uncovered and in a single layer, for a few hours. To freeze, open-freeze on the tray until solid, then bag them and cook from frozen, adding about a minute. Never thaw them first, the filling weeps and the seams go. Cooked leftovers keep for a day in the fridge and are best revived in a little butter and water rather than the microwave. The poaching liquor is good stock — keep it for a soup.
Nutmeg is the traditional partner for ricotta and it earns it, but freshly grated only and a quarter teaspoon is the ceiling. Pre-ground nutmeg is dusty and flat. The whole chilli in the poaching water is a background note, not heat — leave it whole so it perfumes rather than infuses hard.
Sharp greens and warm bread
A bitter green salad or quick vegetables on the side give lift, while warm bread catches any sauce left on the plate.
Get the water out and the rest is just rolling.
Method
- 1
Poach the chicken
Place the chicken breast in a saucepan and cover with lightly salted cold water. Add the bay leaves, peppercorns and whole chilli. You can play around with the aromatics here, but the chilli gives the chicken a wee background warmth without turning the filling into a chilli ravioli. Bring it gently up to a bare simmer and poach until the chicken reaches 75°C in the thickest part. Take the pan off the heat and leave the chicken in the poaching liquid to cool completely. For the best result, keep the chicken in the poaching liquid until you are ready to use it, refrigerating it in the liquid once cooled. This is a cracking job to do the day before. The chicken stays sitting in that seasoned poaching liquor as it chills rather than drying out in the fridge. When you are ready to make the filling, remove the chicken from the liquid, drain well and pat dry.
- 2
Roast the pumpkin
Cut the pumpkin into chunks and spread it out on a baking tray. Roast at 200°C until completely tender and starting to caramelise around the edges. Do not cover it and do not add water. We are trying to get moisture out of the pumpkin, not put more into it. Let it steam-dry for a few minutes when it comes out of the oven, then blitz until smooth. If the purée still looks wet, spread it back over the tray and give it another few minutes in the oven. You want it thick, concentrated and able to hold its shape, not wet pumpkin slop that is going to make your ravioli filling loose. Allow it to cool completely, then weigh 50 g for the filling.
- 3
Make the pasta dough
Mix the 00 flour and semolina together and make a well in the centre. Add the egg yolks, olive oil and salt. Gradually work the flour into the yolks until you have got a rough dough. Knead for 8–10 minutes until smooth and elastic. It will feel fairly firm to begin with, so give the yolks time to work into the flour before deciding it needs anything else. Wrap tightly and rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
- 4
Make the filling
Finely chop the cold poached chicken. Mix with the ricotta, 50 g roasted pumpkin purée, Parmigiano Reggiano, egg yolk, nutmeg and black pepper. Taste it, then add salt if it needs it. Remember, the Parmigiano is already bringing salt with it. The filling should be firm enough to roll into small, slightly rustic balls that hold their shape. Use slightly wet or lightly oiled hands when shaping the filling. It will stop it sticking to your hands and make the job a hell of a lot easier. Keep chilled until you are ready to fill the ravioli.
- 5
Roll and laminate the pasta
Divide the rested dough into manageable pieces. Flatten one piece and run it through the pasta machine, starting on the widest setting. Fold and roll again until smooth, then gradually work your way down through the settings. Lay the fresh herbs over one pasta sheet, cover with another sheet and carefully roll the two together, trapping the herbs between the layers of pasta. Continue rolling until you have got a thin ravioli sheet. Keep any pasta you are not working with covered. Fresh pasta dries out bloody quickly and once the surface dries, sealing your ravioli becomes harder than it needs to be.
- 6
Fill and seal the ravioli
Place the small balls of filling over the pasta sheet, leaving enough room between them to cut and seal your ravioli. Lightly brush the pasta around the filling with water. You do not need to drown it. Just enough moisture to help the two sheets stick. Lay another pasta sheet over the top and gently work around each ball of filling, pushing the air out as you go. Press firmly around the filling to seal, then cut into individual ravioli. Place them on a lightly semolina-dusted tray while you finish the rest.
- 7
Make the brown sage butter
Place the butter in a large frying pan over medium heat. Once it starts to foam, add the garlic and sage. Keep an eye on the milk solids at the bottom of the pan. They will go from pale, to golden, then light brown, and you will start getting that proper nutty, toasted butter smell. Do not wait until it is as dark as you want it before taking it off the heat. Take the pan off when the butter is a shade lighter than you want it. The pan is still bloody hot and those milk solids will keep cooking even though you have turned the heat off. Add a splash of pasta water to pull the temperature down and stop the butter browning any further. It will bubble up, so do not fire half a ladle in. You are stopping the cooking, not making soup.
- 8
Cook and finish
Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a gentle boil. Cook the ravioli for around 2–3 minutes, depending on how thin you have rolled your pasta. Lift the ravioli straight into the brown sage butter with a slotted spoon, taking another splash of pasta water with them. Bring everything together, then add a few knobs of cold butter and toss through. That cold butter and starchy pasta water emulsify with the brown butter and give you a proper glossy sauce that clings to the ravioli, rather than leaving them sitting in a puddle of melted butter. Finish with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano and black pepper.
Cook with it
Related recipes
Leave a comment
Drop your name, email and a note — I read every one.