To give an Italian touch to your Halloween, try this recipes for delicate ravioli filled with pumpkin. They are at their best with a pork sausage dressing, or more simply with butter, Parmesan cheese and sage. This dish can be found in many localities of Pianura Padana, the flat Po valley in Northern Italy, and of the Emilia Romagna hills. Many of these localities claim to have invented it, and according to many, it came, like the great Latin poet Virgil, from Mantua, the artistic city of the Gonzagas.

The fact that Artusi [Forlimpopoli 1820- Firenze 1911, author of the The Art of Eating Well] does not report a recipe for the tortelli (or cappellacci, as they are called in Ferrara) alarmed me, but I was able to find a suitable a 'certified' recipe nevertheless. Just a note to explain why this lovely and nutritious dish is missing from the 'bible of the Italian cuisine': The Art of Eating Well was obviously destined for the new Italian bourgeois class, who had long relegated the pumpkin to the working people's table, considering it a less noble vegetable. The following recipe is loosely based on one I found in Cucina di Romagna, by Renato Pozzetto. For the sake of justice I have to mention that in Mantua they replace lard, potatoes and onions with amaretti (100 gr.) and the grated skin of half a lemon.

What you need :

For the dough:
400 gr. type 0 flour
4 eggs
salt
For the filling:
1.5 kg. yellow pumpkin
100 gr. parmesan or pecorino cheese
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
lard or melted butter or 1-2 spoons of olive oil
1 egg or a little milk
2 small onions
2 small, peeled and boiled potatoes
marjoram

How you do it:

Cut the pumpkin in thick slices and, after eliminating the internal filaments, but not the skin, cook it in a hot oven for an hour. Or, if you wish, you could boil it, but in this case, in order to eliminate the excess water, remember to dry it off at the mouth of the oven. At this point you can peel the pumpkin and cut it in pieces, which you can mix with the boiled potatoes and whiz in a food mixer. Transfer in a bowl and add the egg (or the milk), the cheese, some salt and freshly grated pepper and nutmeg, marjoram and the onions and lard that you will have simmered together separately. If you were to follow the Mantuan recipe, at this point you would also add the amaretti and the grated lemon peel. According to some, you should also leave the mixture to 'bind' for a minimum of 3 to a max of 24 hours.

Now it is time to prepare the dough: work the flour together with the eggs, and add a little salt to season. With a rolling pin, stretch out your dough into sheets, and cut it in 6-7 cm squares. Put a little filling at the centre of each square and close into a rectangular shape, making sure that the borders adhere well. Be careful that your tortelli do not stick to each other: lay them out on a tablecloth on which you have dispersed some flour.

Cook in abundant salted and boiling water (6-7 mins). Season with melted butter (60 gr.), grated Parmesan cheese and a few leaves of sage.