Summery Sweet Corn Ravioli With Zucchini And Basil Recipe

The summer season comes with plenty of fresh produce to experiment with in the kitchen. Tasting Table recipe developer Leah Maroney celebrates this bounty with a summery sweet corn ravioli topped with a light zucchini sauce and finished with basil. She says, "I love that it's the embodiment of summer in a ravioli and uses ingredients you can pick right from your summer vegetable garden." Sweet bright corn straight off the cob is given a smoky char on the grill, mixed with 3-cheeses, stuffed into ravioli, and topped with a simple flavorful sauce featuring another summer standby — sauteed zucchini. A garnish of fresh basil completes the summery dish. 

Whether you're picking fresh produce you grew yourself or sourcing it from a farmers' market, this tasty ravioli dish ticks all the flavor boxes, with the sweetness of the corn balanced by the creaminess of the cheese and the savory garlicky zucchini. A recipe this fresh deserves pasta made from scratch, but it isn't exactly a quick task, and you'll need a pasta roller to make the sheets for the ravioli. As such, Maroney notes, "I would definitely serve it as a main dish since it's so time-consuming." Add a simple salad with tomatoes from your garden and a crusty baguette, and you have the perfect summer supper.

To make the pasta dough, get semolina flour, all-purpose flour, large eggs, olive oil, and salt. Next, for the filling, you'll need ears of fresh corn, butter, salt, ground black pepper, minced garlic cloves, ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. For the sauce, use olive oil, 2 small zucchini (thinly sliced), and a garlic clove (smashed). Finally, to serve you'll want fresh basil leaves and Pecorino Romano cheese.

On a flat surface, combine the Semolina flour and all purpose flour and form a well in the center.

Add the eggs to the center of the flour and gently whisk with a fork to break up the yolks.

Add the salt and olive oil and begin whisking the wet ingredients into the flour until a shaggy dough forms.

Continue to knead the dough until it begins to form a ball, add a tablespoon of water if it is too dry.

Knead another 7 minutes until it becomes an elastic to the touch when pressed with your thumb.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let rest for 1 hour.

Cut the dough into four equal sized pieces.

Using a pasta roller on the largest setting, roll one of the dough pieces into a sheet.

Fold the dough into thirds.

Pass the dough through the largest setting again and then continue to pass the dough through the pasta roller, making the setting smaller and smaller until you reach the last setting.

Fold the sheet in half and cut it into two equal-sized pieces. Repeat with the remaining balls of dough.

Butter the ears of corn and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Heat a grill pan on high heat.

Grill the corn until lightly brown, turning as needed.

Remove the corn from the cob with a sharp knife. Set aside ½ cup of the corn kernels.

Add the remaining corn to a large bowl with the minced garlic, ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Mix until combined. Season with salt and pepper.

Add tablespoons of filling about ½ inch apart from each other on one of the sheets of pasta.

Top with the other sheet of pasta and press around the filling.

Cut the ravioli into rounds using a fluted cutter. Repeat with remaining dough sheets and filling.

Boil a large pot of salted water.

Add the ravioli to the pot about 6 at a time and cook for 2-3 minutes or until they float to the surface. Reserve ⅓ cup pasta water.

Heat the olive oil and thinly sliced zucchini in a large saute pan. Saute the sliced zucchini on high heat until browned, about 5 minutes, adding the smashed garlic halfway through.

Add the pasta water and reserved corn to the pan and reduce the heat to low.

Add the ravioli, basil, and the Pecorino cheese to the pan and toss gently to combine.

Top with more Pecorino and basil and serve.

Fresh corn is definitely a step up from frozen or canned options: Nothing else has quite that juicy crunch. And grilling it, as we do in this recipe, adds the wonderful slight bitterness of char to complement the sweetness of the corn. It takes a bit more effort to prepare, but it's well worth the effort. Thankfully, Maroney has a tip for slicing off the kernels with minimal effort. If you have a bundt pan, you can secure the corn in the central hole, and when you slice the kernels off you'll have a ready-made receptacle to hold them. "The Bundt pan is a great method for catching all the corn kernels. It helps hold the corn stable while catching all the grains," she explains. If you don't have a bundt pan, you can rig something similar by putting a smaller bowl upside-down inside a larger bowl and using that to balance the cob.

Before removing the kernels, she recommends that you make sure to let the corn cool a little too so you don't burn your fingers. Once it's cool and propped up in your bundt pan, use a sawing motion as you cut downwards and slice the kernels off the cob. If you don't have a grill pan, Maroney notes that you can cook it on your outside grill or even boil the corn. Alternatively, if you're channeling summer in another season and fresh corn isn't available, "You can use frozen corn and just heat it up in the microwave or a pan."

This corn and three-cheese ravioli is rich and creamy with a sweet and nutty flavor from the filling. While it's not super light, the taste is still quite delicate and could easily be overpowered if you pair it with strong-tasting or textured ingredients. For this reason, Maroney recommends against using any type of marinara sauce. Tomatoes are high in acid and bring plenty of flavor to the table — which is great for many pasta dishes but not for this summery dish, which would be drowned out by such a potent flavor. 

Instead, Maroney suggests that you keep the sauce light and simple, introducing elements like zesty lemon or aromatic herbs that would highlight the sweet creaminess of the dish She tells us, "The ravioli is delicious with a lemon cream sauce too." She also says you could keep it simple and serve it with a drizzle of browned butter to highlight the nuttiness from the various cheeses and the smoky char on the sweet corn. Alternatively, herb-infused olive oil and freshly grated Pecorino would make a simple yet perfect accompaniment that could showcase other herbs growing in your garden.