Wednesday, August 3, 2005

Butternut Squash Ravioli: Not just Pasta for Dinner



This has been sitting in my "Edits" box since last August. With all the wintery, rainy weather, I thought I'd bring it out, dust it off and show you some summer!



















I picked up some beautiful butternut squash-filled rainbow pasta ravioli today at the Co-op. They were so pretty, with the multi-colored vegetable pastas looking like confetti pressed into the raviolis. In the produce isle, the organic shitake mushrooms were seeming to say, "Me! Me!", so into the basket they went. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts along with zukes and basil from my garden had been on my mind for dinner tonight and with the purchase of the ravioli and shitakes, my plan began to take shape.

The memory of the Ginger-Shitake sauce from our seared ahi dinner (see Ahi post) was still causing my tastebuds to make little leaps of joy, so I started out by re-creating it only this time I used thai basil from my garden instead of cilantro. I cut the amount of lime juice to a mere 2 teaspoons. The rest was pretty much the same procedure as before and the results were wonderful.

The ravioli was cooked just past al dente in boiling, salted water. Take them out before they start to fall apart - they will continue to cook a bit due to the heat inside. The chicken breasts were grilled to a juicy, just-done tenderness; the zucchini grilled quickly afterwards. The sauce, so perfectly paired with the grilled chicken, was just the right compliment to the raviolis, which were able to stand on their on with just the smallest amount of sauce spilling on to them hither and thither. M-m-m-m!

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