Beet Ravioli with Poppyseed Brown Butter

Making pasta from scratch is not very hard. It’s rolling it out that’s a pain in the ass. Without a fancy motorized pasta machine (the manual ones aren’t even really that great), you just can’t get the dough thin enough to make much of anything.

Luckily, there are refrigerated wonton wrappers. Pasta dough contains flour and egg. Wonton dough? Also flour and egg. You can find wrappers at just about any grocery store (they’re usually in the produce department, near the tofu), and they freeze perfectly well, so you can have ’em on hand all the time.

Wonton wrappers are best for ravioli, as they’re pre-cut into the right shape. The small wonton wrappers, which are 2-inch squares, are ideal. (Egg roll wrappers are the same kind of dough, but the pieces are much larger.)

So what to fill your ravioli with? Well, anything that can be chopped or mashed into small pieces. This week’s CSA gave me a small pile of beets, one of my favorite late-season veggies, but not one Snow’s Bend grows in huge quantities. I love roasting beets, which gives them a nice tender texture and accentuates their sweetness. I normally just eat roasted beets as-is as a side, but today I felt like something different.

A little web searching yielded this Bon Appetit recipe, which is how beet met wonton. The original sounded a little bland, so I added some ginger, because its spice matches beets’ sweetness, and a little bit of red pepper flake, because a little heat never hurts anything. My version swaps in Greek yogurt for ricotta as well; I wish I could say that’s because I wanted to make it healthier, but really it’s because I had yogurt and no ricotta. I added some Parmesan to the mix too, to kick up the savory element since my beets were candy-sweet.

The great thing about this recipe is that although it has a lot of steps, most of it can be done ahead of time. You can roast the beets and make the filling up to two days before, or you can go ahead and make the ravioli and then freeze ’em—then it only takes about 10 minutes to cook a batch when you’re ready to eat it.

So this sweet-savory, creamy ravioli gets paired with an unusual sauce—it’s just poppyseeds and butter. I love poppyseeds, but this gave me a little pause. I decided to brown the butter, which adds a nutty note and a little more savoriness. The poppyseeds add a little flavor, but mostly it’s a texture thing—their crunchy explosiveness contrasts with the smooth filling. As you transfer the pasta from the pot to the sauce, a little water gets mixed in, making a nice silky sauce.

Ravioli (with wonton wrappers, anyway), is super-easy to make, but it always looks really elegant. It might be the easiest dish you can make look like it came from a high-end restaurant at home: Just put about 4 ravioli in a huge shallow bowl, dress with the sauce of your choosing, and add a little fresh-herb garnish. (And then charge your guests $25 for the privilege of eating it.)

Beet Ravioli with Poppyseed Brown Butter
Adapted from Bon Appetit

2 to 3 large or 6 to 8 small beets (about 1 pound)
Olive oil
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
2 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra for garnish
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1 pinch red pepper flakes
1 (12-ounce) package wonton wrappers
TK (TK stick) butter
1 tbsp. poppyseeds

Preheat oven to 400°. Trim stem and root ends from beets, toss with olive oil to coat, and wrap tightly in aluminum foil. Roast 60 to 75 minutes or until easily pierced with a fork. Remove from oven and let cool completely.

Peel beets (if skins don’t slip off easily, you didn’t roast long enough) and grate finely into a medium bowl. Stir in yogurt, Parmesan, ginger, and red pepper flakes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Filling may be used immediately or refrigerated, covered, up to 2 days.)

Lay out wonton wrappers in a single layer on two baking sheets lined with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Spoon about 1 1/2 teaspoons filling into the center of each wrapper. Using a finger dipped in water, moisten the edges of each wrapper and fold in half corner-to-corner. Press along edges to seal. (Make sure edges are sealed well; ravioli will fall apart during cooking otherwise.) Repeat until all filling is used up (recipe makes about 48 ravioli).

*To freeze, place baking sheets in freezer until ravioli are frozen solid, then transfer to zip-top bags. Ravioli will keep a week or more frozen. Cook as below; do not thaw before cooking.

Melt butter in a medium pan over medium-low heat and cook, swirling pan occasionally, until butter turns a light golden color. Reduce heat to very low, add poppyseeds, and keep warm.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add ravioli and cook 2 minutes (slightly longer if using frozen ravioli), stirring lightly so ravioli do not stick together. Using a slotted spoon, transfer cooked ravioli to pan containing butter mixture and toss to coat. Serve topped with more grated Parmesan.