1 recipe Pasta Dough
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
4 to 6 sage leaves
Grated Parmesan cheese, for garnish
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Halve the butternut squash lengthwise,
scoop out the seeds, and place the squash facedown on a
parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake until the squash is very tender
(a knife goes through the skin easily), 45 minutes to an hour. The
squash should be somewhat browned and extra squishy.
Allow the squash to cool a bit and then scrape the flesh into a
large bowl, discarding the skin. In a small pot, cook the butter on
medium-high heat until it’s deep brown and smells toasty and
nutty*. Pour into a clean heat-proof bowl so it stops cooking.
Now’s the fun part: flavor the squash to your own personal
taste. Add some of the brown butter, some of the crushed amaretti
cookies, a generous sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, a good grating
of nutmeg, and a pinch of the sage. Give it a stir and taste: you
want it to be intensely sweet and salty (only a little bit will go into
each tortellini, so make it count). Add more butter, cookies,
cheese, nutmeg, sage, and salt until you can’t imagine it tasting any
better. Then set it aside.
Place a sheet of pasta dough on a floured surface and, using a
2½-inch round cookie cutter, cut out circles. Make sure to cut
them close together because you’re not going to reroll the dough
you don’t use.