Man vs. Machine

Man (or Rachel, to be exact)- 1, Machine- 0. Many machines we count on to make our life easier– a car to get us from Boston to Weymouth to Pembroke to Hingham and back to Boston, an iPod dock to play an assortment of country, classic rock, lots of Kings of Leon and a Christmas song here and there to keep us going throughout the day and a pasta extruder to make more pasta in less time. An automatic ravioli filling dispenser, on the other hand… we think not. We’ve been playing with the damn thing for the last 3 months, trying to make sense of the mess of nuts, bolts and metal. Last week we thought we had it; Wednesday, it broke. Enter Rachel, in a sheer stroke of genius, who used a simple fixture of Halloween– the witches hat– as the inspiration to solve our dilemma. Who needs a heavy, clunky machine when you can utilize (drumroll….) a simple pastry bag! With one hand to turn the handle, the other to hold the filling-filled pastry bag and a whole lot of hand-eye coordination to keep the whole process in check, we were finally able to solve the mystery of the ravioli maker. And so it is with great pleasure to announce our special raviolis of the week: a simple three cheese ravioli in a classic white dough and a roasted butternut squash ravioli in a wheat dough. The cheese ravioli is made just like it sounds– white pasta, ricotta cheese, parmesan and pecorino romano. You’ve been asking for months, and we finally listened! Our special first-of-fall ravioli features butternut squash from Springbrook Farm roasted with a glaze of pure maple syrup, a bit of butter, ground clove, nutmeg, salt and pepper. We let the squash brown, caramelizing the maple syrup, and added ricotta, parmesan and  pecorino romano for our first squash ravioli of the season. Serve these with a simple brown butter sage sauce (see recipe below), and you’ll have the perfect dinner for a crisp fall night. Were thrilled to be back at the Hingham Market after last week’s hiatus, and we hope to see you there! (Note– due to the Touch-a-Truck event, all vendors will be moved onto the grass around the gazebo.)