Apple-Butternut Ravioli with Sage & Whiskey Cream Sauce

I've been working a lot again lately, so I decided to take a nice break this afternoon and make some ravioli. I use the standard "well" technique I learned from Mario Batali for making fresh pasta, rolled out using my Kitchenaid stand mixer pasta attachment that my lovely husband gave me for Christmas in 2009. Thanks baby!

During the 30 minutes the pasta rested before rolling, I made the filling. I cut up some butternut squash and apple in small chunks (about a heaping half-cup of each), and put them in a covered bowl in the microwave for 5 minutes with 1 Tbsp of butter. Then I just mashed it all up with a potato masher and added some salt, pepper and fresh-grated nutmeg.

For the sauce, I sauteed about half of a sweet onion and two garlic cloves in olive oil, then added about 1/4 cup Irish whiskey (Jameson was on hand) and about the same amount of light cream, then seasoned it with salt, pepper and about a tsp of sage. I'd intended to put some crumbled bacon on top with the shredded parmesan I added, but when I looked in the fridge, there was a lamentable lack of bacon. I consulted the freezer - no Italian sausage either. I think having the bacon or sausage would have been the perfect compliment to the very-slightly-sweet pasta, but it was great anyway. Next time, I'll be sure to have some sort of pig meat available to crumble on top, and maybe some gorgonzola instead of the parmesan to offset the pasta filling just a teeny bit more. I really liked the apple and squash though.

Dinner was quite lovely overall I think, and frankly it just felt good to get back in the kitchen for a while. I've been a little rusty since the holidays ended, and I need to get warmed up again before the Super Bowl party next week...