Homemade Pasta

I dusted off the manual Atlas pasta machine this weekend and made sure everything still works (just like new!). Dinner plan was simple, bake some French bread, make fresh fettuccine pasta tossed with some Bolognese sauce. The only thing left was to decide which pasta dough recipe to use.

After looking through some cookbooks and searching online for some recipes, I settled on a very simple egg and flour recipe. One author in an Italian cookbook suggested not using Semolina (Durum) flour since it has a tendency to be gritty. She found that home cooks have better success with unbleached all purpose flour. Her description of gritty was exactly the experience I had with Semolina flour so I decided to follow her advice.

I followed the 1 cup of flour to 1 egg formula but also decided to add a pinch of salt to each cup of flour. Some recipes called for salt, some didn't. I chose to add salt because I felt without it, the pasta might not be as tasteful. I think salting the water would add flavor when cooking but I wasn't sure how much since fresh pasta only takes about 2 1/2 minutes to cook. The following recipe will yield about 1 pound of fresh pasta and feeds 3-4 people. I also used my standing mixer to do the initial mixing and finished with hand kneading.

Ingredients:

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour plus extra for dusting
2 pinches of salt
2 large eggs

Directions:

In a electric mixer fitted with the paddle, combine flour and salt. I used the paddle since it mixes ingredients better than the dough hook and I was going to knead by hand. Add the eggs and mix until all the flour is combined. You may need to scrape down the sides to get all the flour incorporated.

If you don't have a mixer, you can do everything by hand. Mix the flour and salt together and form a mound on a flat work surface. Make a well in the center. Add eggs into the well and lightly beat with a fork. You can use your hands too, if you prefer. Gradually beat in flour from the inside wall of the well in a circular motion. Try to keep the sides of the well intact with your other hand as you're beating. Continue until all the flour is incorporated and you can form a ball.

Flour the work surface and begin kneading the dough. There are several good videos on YouTube that shows how to mix and knead the dough. Knead the dough until it is elastic and smooth, about 8-10 minutes. Dust the work surface and/or dough with flour during kneading to prevent sticking; a bench scraper is useful to scrape sticky dough off the work surface. You can also get a plastic bench scraper for about $1, and they work great too. The end product should not stick to your hands.

Cover the dough with a cotton kitchen towel and let rest for at least 30 minutes. You can also wrap the dough in plastic wrap but you might want to brush the surface with a very light coating of olive oil to prevent sticking.

Cut the ball of dough into thirds, cover the pieces you are not using to prevent drying. Dust the work surface with flour. Press a piece of dough into a rectangle and sprinkle both sides with flour. On the widest setting (#1 on my Atlas), roll the dough through the pasta machine. Fold it over on itself into thirds (like a business letter), dust the sides and roll through the pasta machine. Repeat 2-3 more times. The surface of the dough should be smooth.

Reduce the roller width by 1 setting and roll the pasta through through 2-3 times on each setting. Continue reducing the rollers width until the desired thickness is reached (#5 on my machine for fettuccine). Dust the sheet of pasta as needed to prevent sticking to the rollers.

Once the desired thickness is reached, roll the sheet of pasta through the pasta cutter. The pasta can also be cut by hand: dust the top of the sheet with flour; starting on a shorter side, roll the pasta sheet like a jelly roll; using a sharp serrated knife, cut into the desired width. For fettuccine, cut about 1/4", wider for parpadelle (5/8" to 1").

Separate the cut pasta and dust lightly with flour to prevent sticking. You can dust with cornmeal. The cornmeal will separate from the pasta when cooked and won't affect the end result, but you'll have cornmeal floating in your pasta water. I prefer to dust with flour.

Lay out the pasta on a cotton towel to dry a bit or hang from a pasta drying rack. Finish remaining pieces of dough. An interesting trick I read on a food forum for a make-shift drying rack is to cover a broom stick with plastic wrap and then laid out on the back of 2 chairs. Then hang the cut pasta on the broom stick.

You can also freeze extra pasta. If you are going to freeze, make sure the pasta is completely dry (will take several hours) before storing in freezer bags. You can make small birds nest (like the picture below) and let them dry that way. When ready to cook, you can put the frozen pasta directly into boiling water (no need to defrost) and will take about 3-4 minutes to cook.

The results: I really enjoyed the fresh pasta, it had a very nice tooth and I thought the thickness was just right. It was perfect with the bolognese sauce. Got thumbs up from the Mister and one of the Eating Machines. I think this pasta dough will work nicely with ravioli (next on the list).

On a side note, I got a little crazy with bread making that day. I made 2 batches of French bread baguettes, 1 sourdough, 1 regular. Guess I was making up for time lost for those 2 weeks I was sick (hehe). Most of the loaves found loving homes to go to since there's no way we could have eaten through all of these.

Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend. Have a great week. Now go and eat well.

Read more!

Spaghetti and Meatballs

I remember having a blast at the Old Spaghetti Factory as a kid with my then-best-friend and her family. We used to get the spaghetti and meatballs with a Shirley Temple chaser. A couple of kids thinking they were so cool. Ahhh, good times. Somewhere along the path of growing up, meatballs fell out of favor. But then, several foods from my youth just doesn't have the same appeal now. But I still have the fond memories and you know what they say, you can't go home again.

The Mister still loves pasta and meatballs. Frozen store-bought meatballs are a common thing in the freezer although he doesn't make them much anymore. Having a ready supply of bolognese sauce doesn't help the meatballs' case either. But maybe store-bought has been the problem all along. Maybe my eschew to bland clumps of dry meat has given meatballs an unfair reputation. And with Anne Burrell's help, maybe I can go home again, at least just to visit for a short while.

Linguine and Meatballs in Marinara Sauce

You can find Burrell's recipe here. Fair warning, she likes to use a lot of salt, I mean *a lot* of salt. I'm a salt-aholic but even her proportions are a bit much for me. I recommend starting with what you're comfortable with and then increase as you see fit.

I couldn't find any ground veal and wasn't in the mood to grind my own. So I decided to make ground beef and ground pork meatballs. I used a 2:1 ratio of ground beef to ground pork, yielding the 1 1/2 lb of meat that the recipe calls for. (BTW, to the person who commented on the recipe that her family doesn't eat pork or beef and made it with turkey and veal, you might want to look up what veal is before you make anymore meatballs.) Other than the meat changes, I pretty much followed the recipe. The size of the meatballs were a bit larger than golf balls and yielded 22 meatballs. Here are the ingredients that I used.

Ingredients:
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, 1/4-inch dice
Salt
2 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
Pinch crushed red pepper
1 lb ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
2 large eggs
1 cup grated Parmigiano
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup water

The onions are cooked in olive oil until very soft and aromatic, then garlic and pepper flakes followed. I knew when the onions were done cooking that there was a tad too much but I added it all to the meat mixture anyway (building the baseline). I even used a medium sized onion but maybe Burrell and I have different perspectives of what a large onion is.

When browning the meatballs in the pan, the surface onions were falling off the meatballs, which required removal after each batch. I didn't roll the meatballs tight, just enough to give shape and they would hold together. So maybe some of the surface onions didn't adhere as well.

It didn't take long to brown the meatballs since the purpose is just to brown and not to cook them all the way through. So don't worry if parts of the meatballs are still pink. The oven will take care of the final cooking. Keeping the pan lubed with olive oil will help keep the meatballs from sticking. If they do stick, don't try to move them. Once they are sufficiently browned on the bottom, they will release on their own. A little trick I found that helps prevent meatballs from sticking is to shake the pan back and forth as I'm adding the raw meatballs. This will coat the meatballs in oil.

Once browned, the meatballs go into a preheated 350 degrees F oven for about 15 minutes. My meatballs were on the smaller side, so I checked them at 12 minutes and they were done. Here they are out of the oven. The whole house will smell amazing at this point!

I also decided to make Burrell's marinara sauce since I'm sure her sauce is suppose to match well with the meatballs. I used thick cut smoked bacon since I still can't find a source close to home that carries pancetta. The other thing I changed was using crushed tomatoes instead of canned Italian plum tomatoes. I don't have a food mill and really didn't want to go through all that hassle. I thought the marinara sauce turned out pretty good but was a bit on the acidic side. I added a pat of butter, which help reduced the acidity a bit.

Funny thing I noticed is that although we have frozen meatballs as a stock item, we didn't have spaghetti on hand. So linguine it was. Here's a close-up of the final dish.

So did I go home? Did I travel back to the giddiness of sipping cherry sweetened nectar of youth? Not quite but it was pretty good. I think I need to adjust the meatballs more to my liking. They were tender and very flavorful but the taste is not quite where I would like it. Things that I would adjust are: amounts of onions, salt, bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese. I think I'd also like to try to cook some tomato paste with the onions the next go around to give it more depth. And if I ever can find a good source for ground veal, I'd add that too. I'll report back the results, of course.

The recipe made more meatballs than what we could eat that night but leftovers, including the marinara sauce, made for good meatball sandwiches the next night (post to come). Extra meatballs can be frozen for later use, too.

On a side note, Anne Burrell's Secret of a Restaurant Chef has been the only new show on Food Network's new line-up that I found enjoyable. Maybe it's her quirkiness and wiggly style but I think it's more of her approach to food that appeals to me. Hopefully she'll provide some much needed inspiration for some new dishes (with my own adjustments, of course).

Read more!

Chili Spaghetti

One of the Mister's favorite dishes in Hawaii is chili spaghetti. Chili served over spaghetti has been around for quite a while and has several names. Many know it as Cincinnati Chili. Others call it spaghetti chili. A simple recipe, chili served over hot spaghetti. Can't get easier than that. If you think about it, it's just a variation of spaghetti in meat sauce, with or without beans.

I was too lazy to cook the other night, kind of under the weather. I had some leftover CAB's chili in the fridge so the Mister decided to make some chili spaghetti. We like Barilla pasta. It was a very good rendition of chili spaghetti. The spiciness of the chili really gave the spaghetti a good kick. No need to drench it. Now I'll know to make a double batch of chili next time.

That's all for now. Hope you're having a good week. Now go and eat well.

Read more!

Spinach and Mushroom Ravioli

I wanted something really good this weekend and since I had the time on Sunday, I decided to make one of my favorite recipes from Giada's Everyday Italian. I've made this dish a couple of times and everyone loves it. An easy dish that takes a bit time but definitely worth the effort. If you love mushrooms like I do, this is definitely one you'll have to try. It also uses store bought egg roll wraps so I don't have to make pasta dough. Of course if you prefer to make your own pasta dough for the ravioli wraps, you can certainly do that.


The first time I made it, I also made the Individual Strawberry Trifles and what a wonderful compliment this dessert was to the raviolis. I was a bit hestitant with the strawberries and aged balsamic vineger combo but put it all together and it was heavenly. I've got to make it again when strawberries are in season.


Note that you will need a food processor for the sauce and for the filling. You can also use a blender for the sauce. If you don't have a food processor, you might want to chop the mushrooms very finely and chop the spinach up a bit more too. You're trying to achieve a coarse filling rather than a chunky filling. You can also make the sauce the day before.

Here's the recipe with my modifications noted.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons for boiling water
• 6 ounces button mushrooms, sliced
• 1 (10-ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
• 1/4 cup mascarpone (I use ricotta cheese)
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan, plus extra for garnishing
• 6 egg roll wrappers (6 1/2 by 6 1/2-inch squares)
• 2 large eggs, beaten with 1 teaspoon water (1 was enough for me)
• 1/2 cup mushroom (cremini, shiitake, button), finely chopped (I used portebello, Italian Brown, and button mushrooms)
• 2 cups tomato sauce, recipe follows
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large saute pan heat 1/4 cup of the olive oil. When almost
smoking, add the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper (go easy on the salt here since the Parmesan cheese has salt in it and you'll be checking for seasoning again).

Cook until all the liquid has evaporated from the mushrooms, about 6 minutes. Add spinach and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and place mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until you get a coarse texture. Place in bowl and stir in mascarpone and Parmesan cheese. Check for seasoning and set aside.

Line up 3 wrappers on a cutting board. Brush with the egg and water mixture. Using a tablespoon, arrange 4 dollops of the filling on each wrapper – 2 on the first row and 2 on the second – 1-inch apart. Place another wrapper directly on top, pressing around the filling and sealing the edges. Using a fluted ravioli cutter, cut out squares of ravioli. Each filled wrapper will yield 4 raviolis, giving you a total of 12 ravioli. Place ravioli onto a floured baking sheet and keep covered with a linen towel.


In a large pot, bring to a boil 4 quarts of salted and oiled water. (I didn't put any oil in the boiling water but make sure you stir often to keep the raviolis from sticking.) Carefully add small batches of ravioli, about 3 to 4 at a time. This will prevent them from crowding in the pot and sticking together. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Using a spider strainer, carefully remove the ravioli and place on the plate. Tent with foil to keep warm and continue cooking remaining ravioli. In a saute pan, heat remaining 1/4 cup olive oil. When almost smoking, add chopped mushrooms and saute until soft and most of the liquid has evaporated, about 8 minutes. Carefully pour in tomato sauce and simmer for 5 minutes.


Divide ravioli between 2 serving plates. Top with mushroom tomato sauce and sprinkle with Parmesan.

Simple Tomato Sauce:

• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 (32-ounce) cans crushed tomatoes
• 2 dried bay leaves
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, optional

In a large casserole pot, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute until soft and translucent, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add celery and carrots and season with salt and pepper. Saute until all the vegetables are soft, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add tomatoes and bay leaves and simmer uncovered on low heat for 1 hour or until thick. Remove bay leaves and check for seasoning. If sauce still tastes acidic, add unsalted butter, 1 tablespoon at a time to round out the flavors. (I usually use about 1 1/2 tablespoons to get my sauce where I like it. I do like my sauce slightly on the acidic side.)


Add 1/2 the tomato sauce into the bowl of a food processor. Process until smooth. Continue with remaining tomato sauce.

If not using all the sauce, allow it to cool completely and pour 1 to 2 cup portions into freezer plastic bags. This will freeze up to 6 months.


Yield: 6 cups



Here is a picture of half the raviolis plated. I like to put a layer of the sauce on the bottom so that they don't stick to the bottom of the plate.

I then top the raviolis with some more dollop of the sauce and sprinkled with some grated Parmesan cheese. This night, I went
with pregrated.


And there you have it. I ended making 8 raviolis per person, which is plenty to get you full.


Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Read more!