Giada's Butternut Squash Tortellini with Brown Butter Sauce

This is possibly the most difficult recipe I've made to date. You can find Giada's recipe and list of ingredients here, but the cook time is certainly not ten minutes. I did the prep work and stuffing the night before and boiled the pasta and made the sauce the next day. I did a step-by-step blog for this one at my main blog, so here it is!

Peel the butternut squash for the filling and chop it into cubes. It was pretty hard to slice and I had no idea it had seeds! The recipe had me roast the cubed squash with some oil and spices and I threw some seeds in the pan to roast. YUM!

Next, I threw the squash, some garlic, more spices, and a secret ingredient. It called for amaretti cookies, small Italian almond cookies, but I couldn't find them at four stores, so I subbed animal crackers!

Third, I placed wonton squares on some wax paper, making sure the surface was always dry. I found these in the produce aisle.

I put a tablespoon of the mixture in the center of the square (this, a v. liberal tablespoon!) and wet the edges with some water using a basting brush. (You can use any brush as long as you can control the amount of water, pretty much!)

Next, I folded the square, pressed the edges, and patted it to remove air bubbles. I wet the two corners of the longest edge and pressed those together and repeated the above process.

After making 36 tortellinis, I called it a night. The next day, I made the sauce with some butter, cranberries, and toasted almonds. Keep in mind that I toasted the almonds in my oven to bring out the flavor!

As my sauce cooked, my tortellini boiled until floating.

This is a random image of my sage. I bought it at the grocery store, but absolutely love that it was still attached to the soil! Maybe that's why I am so excited about starting my garden.

I used a slotted spoon to serve my pasta and topped it with the sauce. We loved it! It's very heavy with delicious fall flavors like cranberry, butternut squash, and toasted almonds.

Voila!

If you're asking yourself how I can call myself undomestic, you share the feelings of my best friend forever. My overflowing laundry basket, the pile of dishes in the sink, and my crumb-littered floors say otherwise. Cooking is outside of the domestic jurisdiction, though a very helpful asset in homemaking.

I maintain that I cook like a chemist.