Sweet Potato Ravioli

Want to seem like a culinary genius but stay true to your lazy, short-cutting self? Then try this great cheater ravioli made with wonton wrappers! Actually, it's still pretty time consuming- took me an hour to assemble- but seems much less daunting than home-made pasta. I've made peirogi before but never its classy Italian cousin, ravioli. But I had leftover sweet potato puree so I thought I'd give it a shot. It actually doesn't take much filling, so if you even have a couple of cups left you'll have plenty.

Using store bought wontons, I laid each one out and filled it with a heaping teaspoon of the puree mixed with toasted walnuts for a little extra body.  For a fancy-smancy touch, I pressed a small basil leaf into the bottom layer of each wonton before filling. Then I dipped my finger in a little bowl of water and ran it around the edges of the wrapper, and layered another wrapper on top, pressing the edges to seal. I tried using an antique star-shaped cookie cutter on the first few, which turned out super-cute, but the pressure required to cut through the wontons caused the copper finish to come off on the ravioli, and i decided poisoning was NOT super-cute.  For the rest I opted to give the ravioli a trim with a knife, just lopping off the extra dough in a basic diamond pattern. The trimmed pieces turned out to be pretty substantial triangles of wontons, so instead of throwing them out I threw them on a baking sheet under the broiler and tossed them with a little salt for a quick wonton chip snack.

I dropped ravioli three at a time into a gentle rolling boil so as not to rupture the delicate parcels. After a few minutes they bobbed to the top and turned translucent, letting me know they were ready.  Most sweet potato ravioli recipes call for a brown butter sauce, but I found the filling to be so rich already that I decided on a very clean and light herb broth reduction to ladle over the finished ravioli. I simmered vegetable broth with fresh bay leaf, rosemary and thyme for 20 minutes or so. I then removed the herbs before reducing so the broth wouldn't get bitter.

It turned out to be a perfect herby counterpoint to the luscious creaminess of the sweet potato.  I'm very satisfied with my first foray into ravioli and can't wait to experiment with more wonton concoctions.