Last weekend, after a trip to the Dupont Circle farmers market, I was inspired to aspire to capture the taste of Autumn on a plate.  For months now, I've wanted to try my hand at making tortelloni and after a quick Web search, I found this great blog post elsewhere on how to make them.  Using this construction knowledge from Rosa Jackson, I departed from the traditional contents of tortelloni (how dare I even call my creation Italian!) to showcase the Autumn season: butternut squash, chicken-apple sausage and goat cheese tortelloni with an apple cider reduction sauce—ingredients all purchased at the farmers market.

I began by steaming the squash, which I had recently learned from the Cooks Illustrated New Best Recipe cookbook is a bit faster than roasting.

While the squash was steaming, I poured a quart of apple cider into a small saucepan and began reducing it on low heat and added some apple cider vinegar to punch it up a bit.  I did some searching on the Web for a savory apple cider reduction sauce recipe, but found none.  So I made it up, with hopes it would pair nicely with the chicken-apple sausage in the tortelloni.  In addition to the cider and vinegar, I added a bit of clove and freshly grated nutmeg.  When the quart had reduced to about a quarter-cup, I strained it through a wire mesh sieve and poured it into a plastic squeeze bottle to make plating it easier—thinking that a little apple cider reduction sauce would go a long way.

Also while the squash was steaming, and the cider reducing, I removed the chicken-apple sausage from its casing and browned it in a cast iron skillet.

I then combined the squash, sausage and goat cheese with a bit of salt, clove and nutmeg and made the tortelloni as instructed in Rosa Jackson's blog post linked above.  Also, when making the pasta dough, I added some of steamed butternut squash to the mix, with the hope of having orange-streaked pasta.  It didn't quite work out as planned.  The dough became orange, but not streaked, and the added moisture of the squash demanded the addition of quite a bit of extra flour and semolina (I use a mixture of the two in my pasta dough) in order to return the dough to the proper consistency.  At any rate, the orange hued pasta dough turned out fine, though not as pretty as I had envisioned it.

I plated up the tortelloni with some fresh flat leaf parsley, freshly grated black pepper and shaved pecorino romano cheese, adding a drizzle of the apple cider reduction sauce.  Mission accomplished.  Unfortunately, at the time I made the dish I didn't anticipate starting this blog today, so I didn't take any photos.  If I had, the photos would have revealed two things: (1) I'm not a very good photographer and (2) my tortelloni-making technique needs some work (mine weren't nearly as pretty as Rosa Jackon's).  Nevertheless, they tasted pretty good . . . I'd make the dish again to serve to family and friends and I don't think I'd change a thing.