Carrot ravioli with broccoli-ricotta filling

Name: Carrot ravioli with broccoli-ricotta filling
Prep time: 60 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 100 min
Yield: 3 -4 - makes approx 44 ravioli
Ingredients: 9 oz carrots (250g, gives 4oz cooked weight); 4 oz broccoli (115g, gives 3oz cooked weight); 1 tbsp olive oil (for roasting, approx); 2 eggs; 2 cups all-purpose flour (280g plain flour); 1 cup ricotta (240g); 1 clove garlic (small)

July 19, 2015 by Caroline's Cooking 38 Comments

These carrot ravioli and filled with a tasty mix of roast broccoli and ricotta, all coming together to make a delicious, colorful pasta meal.

It’s that time of year when there are some great things available at farmers’ markets. Lots of fantastically colorful fruit and vegetables and locally made goodies from bread and pastries to cheese. One thing with making your own pasta is you can play around with different flavors in the pasta, and the filling if you make ravioli, and so I decided to try something a little different.

These carrot ravioli with broccoli-ricotta filling might not be the most typical combination, but the result is both colorful and delicious.

Experimenting with homemade pasta

I’m getting a bit more in the swing of things with my pasta maker these days, though I am still far from fast at ravioli – I clearly need to practice a bit more and these ones certainly make me want to try again soon.

The pasta here is made with roast carrots in the dough which gives them both a nice flavor and a beautiful color. I probably didn’t puree the carrots as well as I should have so the pasta is more flecked than smooth. This does mean you have to take care when rolling that you don’t get holes in the pasta, but it still looks pretty and tastes great.

The filling is simply roast broccoli, ricotta and a little garlic pureed together and is wonderfully creamy and tasty. It’s a subtle flavor, but works really well with the pasta and is also easy to make as well.

To make the overall dish easier, the vegetables can be roasted ahead of time and then you can make up the filling and the pasta dough shortly before you are going to have them. I would definitely recommend roasting the vegetables rather than cooking any other way, as you want to get the moisture out of the carrots to save making the dough too wet, and the flavor for the broccoli is much more distinct and works really well too.

The bit that takes the time is rolling the pasta and forming the ravioli, but I think some of it is just practice. The actual cooking after you have made the carrot ravioli is very quick, they just take a few minutes in boiling water. They are ready when they boil up to the top, in much the same way as gnocchi.

How to serve these carrot ravioli

How you serve these is a bit up to your own taste, but I would recommend you keep it something relatively simple and not too strong so that you can appreciate the delicate flavors in the pasta itself. A simple oil and parmesan, browned butter or roast tomato sauce would all be good.

These might take a little bit more work than your average dish, but they are incredibly tasty – homemade pasta is so much better than bought and the additional flavors in here work so well too. Not to mention the fact that you get in a good amount of vegetables without even noticing! We all gobbled them down and enjoyed every last bite and, despite the fact they took a bit of time, I will certainly be making them again.

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4.5 from 2 votes