Molto pasta!

It’s amazing how some of the best loved food is usually the cheapest to make, like pasta.  How many people enthusiastically say ”I loooove pasta!”? A lot. Flour, egg, splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt and you have dough you can make into all sorts of pretty shapes.  Personally I’m a big fan of pappardelle and not just because I like the way it sounds. It’s ribbony and flowy and kind of dances around on your plate.  A little sauce here, a little sauce there and you can ‘mmmm’ your way for hours. Ok minutes but still, there is something about noodles that makes people happy.  I’m sure restaurants and food companies are happy too since the ingredients are few and cheap.

On the menu: Vegetable lasagna
                             Carbonara noodles two colors
                             Shrimp ravioli with basil, tomato jus
                            

With such a simple menu I thought last night’s class was going to be molto easy. What I forgot is that dough needs to rest, needs to be kneaded, whispered to. The recipe we worked of off is 3/4 of a cup of all purpose flour (not semolina), 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt.  You can work together by hand – and this is how I remember my grandmother doing it – by making a little well in the flour , cracking your egg in the middle and incorporating it with a fork.  We threw everything into the food processor last night to skip this rather messy step.  Do this only with the blade because you are still ‘cutting’ every thing – if you use the paddle or any other kind of dough attachment you will make it too tough.  After everything is incorporated you finish by hand.  Your dough should be crumbly and dry – work it into a disc or ball shape, wrap it in plastic and set it aside to rest.

Coloring your dough

Isn’t colored pasta fun? (I think it’s exciting)  To make green pasta add parsley juice, yes parsley not spinach.  Blend parsley then throw in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze out all the juice. You have your  green! To make red add tomato paste, orange or yellow add saffron, but  heat it up in water first to get the color.  Black? Squid ink! How many of you have that in the freezer? Black colored pasta kind of freaks me out and squid ink smells awful but hey, at least you know it’s out there.  For other colors use your imagination. Just keep in mind that adding anything besides the basic ingredients will make your dough wet and what you want when making pasta is dry dry dry. You might have to adjust the flour a little.

Let the kneading begin

Once you let your dough rest, it’s time to pull out your machine and knead.  If you don’t have a machine I would seriously reconsider making pasta.  I’m not sure what my grandmother did but my only guess is that she used her hands and a rolling pin. Maybe that’s why we didn’t have noodles that often…  It is important to flatten out your dough a little so it fits through the largest hole/slot. I didn’t do this and only God and Chef Patrice were able to save my pasta. It started to crumble and harden and ‘frustrated’ is an understatment of how I felt.  Start running your dough through the machine, folding in between runs and progressively turning down (or up based on the machine) the number so you end up with very thin pasta. If you’re making lasagna cut into the shape of the dish you plan on cooking it in and place on a sheet pan with a little corn meal to dry.  If you’re cutting your dough into shapes run through whatever shape attachment you want and let noodles dry the same way or else they will stick together when cooking.

Last night we also made colored pasta, as in one noodle two colors.  Take green dough (or whatever color) and white and run through the machine.  Remove excessive flour and wet one dough a little, then take the other and place  on top. Press together, let dry a little then run through the cutter and you have one color on one side and another color on the other. Nice. 

Lasagna with roasted vegetables and goat cheeseTo assemble your lasagna cook noodles first (always do this, even when store bought) and shock in ice water.  In a pan saute onion, garlic, fennel, and tomato paste.  Deglaze with Ricard, an anise liqueur that you can live without if you don’t have any.  Add tomatoes and veal (or chicken at home) stock and simmer. Season and pass through a strainer and you have tomato jus, because it should be on the thin side.  In an oiled baking dish add a lasagna noodle, roasted vegetables and goat cheese.  Press another noodle on top, add some jus and maybe parmasan. Repeat until you either run out of noodles or filling, ending with a noodle, jus and lots of parmesan on top.  Pop in a 350 degree oven for color. The lasagna was absolutely delicious. The thin layers of pasta and the jus made it so light compared to the regular lasagna I’m used to.  For the first time I think, I felt healthy after eating pasta. 

Carbonara

I can’t remember the last time I ate carbonara.  Traditional carbonara has eggs but the French Chef Patrice version did not.  Render bacon in a little olive oil then add finely chopped onion and garlic.  Add chopped ham and cream and bring to a boil. Finish with lots of parmesan or pecorino and taste.  Add your boiled pasta, mix and serve.  Last night I kept thinking “something is missing, something is missing”. This morning I remembered what – pepper! Didn’t add any pepper and to me at least, it made a BIG difference.

Ravi-failure

The ravioli had so much potential.  Finely chopped shrimp with butter, salt and basil. Chop chop chop into a paste like constistency. When you have your dough ready brush with a little egg, place a little of the mixture in the middle, place other dough on top, cut in a circle or square or whatever and seal the edges and boil.  When the outside of the pasta is soft your ravioli is done and ready to serve with tomato jus or pesto.  In theory it should have been fairly easy but we had to get fancy with our ravioli dough.  Different colors and stripes too.  We were supposed to take little pieces of black and white dough, bind together with water and run through the machine making stripes. Can you see it? We did for a second before it turned into a big sheet of gray. Our raviolis looked like…whale skin. Very unappetizing and certainly not blog worthy.  

Well?

I learned a lot about pasta last night. One, unless you have a lot of counter space in your kitchen you probably shouldn’t make it. Two, unless you enjoy working with flour and cursing, you probably shouldn’t make it.  And three, I will enjoy it at restaurants known for their ‘homemade pasta’.

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