Summer Salivations - Part I

I could not possibly have made that sound less appetizing. Okay, I could have titled the post "disgusting pukations from the planet Hurl," but I also don't go around philosophizing with an anthropomorphic tiger, and I think only six year old boys who do that are allowed to utter that sort of phrase.

I digress (as if any of my posts weren't digressions already). I'm here today to share with you, crammed into a two mondo posts, four dishes I've played around with this summer! Three are pastas. Are you surprised? I'm not - for some reason, summer is the time when I can't get enough pasta. It becomes all about the fresh ingredients, so why not?

Anyway, here we go!

Homemade Peppery Papardelle with Sauteed Zucchini and Mushrooms and Sundried Tomatoes


This dish here was fun to make, pretty much impromptu, when my brother Alexander came up to visit. I basically took inventory of the kitchen and made a sauce to accompany this papardelle out of whatever was around.

Ingredients
4 cups durum semolina
5 eggs
at least 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt

2-3 zucchinis (and/or other summer squash), chopped into chunks
olive oil
5-10 crimini mushrooms
1/2 cup sundried tomatoes
salt and pepper
a hefty handful of fresh basil
a few cloves of garlic (duh)
shallot, diced

Procedure

1. Prepare the pasta. If you want a more detailed description of how to make pasta, see several of our earlier posts. Make the semolina into a mound, mixing in the salt and pepper. Make a well in the middle and crack the eggs into it. Carefully break the yolks with a fork and mix, slowly incorporating more and more of the flour as you go, reinforcing the walls as necessary. Once the liquid is gone, continue mixing by hand until the dough holds together. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap (or if you're as much of a hippie as I am, in a used plastic bag), and store in the freezer for an hour. Go watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.



2. Roll out the pasta. If possible, conscript younger brother to do a lot of the rolling. Aim for about 1 mm thick. Once it's rolled out, cut into strips about 1/2 and inch (maybe even a little wider) wide. Set aside, and put up some water to boil.


3. Get the sauce ready. While younger brother is nearing the end of his pasta rolling, cut up your vegetables and, if necessary, rehydrate your sundried tomatoes. Heat some olive oil in a skillet and saute the zucchini and set aside. Then saute the mushrooms, and also set aside. Prevent younger brother from munching everything you just sauteed. Set about heating a good few tablespoons of oil, and saute your shallot. After it turns translucent, add most of the garlic and the sundried tomatoes. Now is a good time to put the pasta in to boil. Put the remaining parts of the sauce together once it's simmered for a few minutes, saving the remaining garlic and the basic for last. Turn off the head after giving it a few stirs. The pasta should only take a few minutes, so test it to see if it tastes done. Once it's al dente, drain it and combine pasta with sauce in a big bowl. Top servings with plenty of Parmesan.


Tada! This one is a good recipe for an evening where you have a good few hours to devote to the food, but believe me, it's worth it. The result is one of the most savory pasta dishes I've ever sampled!

Classic Tomato and Basil Pasta... with Three Colors of Tomato


Nothing says delectable summer meal like some pasta with olive oil, basil, garlic and tomatoes, right? Right. Except when you live by a co-op, and so you have access to locally grown heirloom tomatoes that come in a staggering variety of colors!

Ingredients
1 lb pasta of your choice
3 heirloom tomatoes (I went with green zebra, purple and classic red)
1 hearty handful of fresh basil
3 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
salt and pepper
Parmesan

Procedure

1. Boil the pasta and chop the veggies.


2. Heat up some olive oil on low heat. Add about half the garlic and the salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then add the rest of the ingredients, stir and turn off the heat. Combine with the pasta and top with Parmesan.

Easy, right? :)

Okay, I'm blogged out. See you soon for Part II.

Red Wine Ravioli

Well, summer is here, the sun is shining, holy crap it's hot out even in Minnesota, and it's time to pluck fresh herbs from our garden, buy produce from the Midtown Farmer's Market (how we missed it) and make pasta from scratch. A lot.

After making quite a lot of linguine and farfalle, we decided to try an elusive shape we'd never tried before: the mysterious ravioli...

Red Wine Ravioli

Ingredients
about 2 cups durum semolina flour
about 1 cup bread flour
3 medium eggs
red wine as needed
15 mushrooms
1 red shallot
olive oil
1/8 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste
hefty pinch oregano
small handful chopped basil

Music Listened To
chances are we put an iPod on shuffle and enjoyed whatever ridiculous thing came out

Procedure

Step 1: The Pasta. Pile a mixture of semolina and bread flour on a clean counter top and make a well in the middle. Crack your eggs into the well, taking care not to let it spill over the edge. Use a fork to break the yolks and mix them.


Very, very carefully, start to incorporate the flour from the edges of the well into the mixture, bolstering your walls as necessary. If it breaches (which it usually has when we do it) it's OK - just stop the egg from spilling all over the place and bring it back in its place (we did say this should be a clean counter top). Now, this will probably start to get pretty dry once everything gets mixed together, so this is where the wine comes in. Just give it a little glug every time it isn't holding together. I wouldn't go more than a quarter cup (if that), but do not fear the wine. If you're especially avid, you could even replace one or two of the eggs with an equivalent amount of wine.


Once it's mixed and the dough holds together in one big lump, wrap it up in plastic and throw it in the fridge for about an hour.

Step 2: The Rolling. This step really doesn't warrant much description, but it does take a heck of a lot of time. Divide the dough into two equal balls and roll it out (we went by hand with a rolling pin, but feel free to use a machine. If you're a wuss) until you have two 1 mm thick sheets of pasta. Don't just go by the thickness on one side - try to get it as even as possible.


Step 3: The Filling. Chop you shallot and mince your garlic. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and add the shallot. Saute for about 3-5 minutes, then add the garlic and finely chopped mushrooms. Add several glugs of wine - the mushrooms will just drink it up. After the wine is almost soaked up, add the herbs, salt, pepper and Parmesan and mix. You can leave it on low for a while if you like, but it's effectively ready to go once the cheese melts and is thoroughly mixed in.


Step 5: The Assembly. Lay out one of your pasta sheets on a cutting board and trim into the shape of a rectangle. Place about a teaspoon of filling in one corner, leaving about half an inch border from the edges. Place the next dollop also half an inch from the edges, a whole inch away from the first dollop. Continue adding dollops until you fill the rectangle with dollops, each separated by an inch, each no closer than about half an inch to the edge. Use a brush or your fingers to brush water onto the pasta that isn't covered by filling. This will help glue the ravioli together. Lay the other sheet on top. Gently use your fingers to form it into mounds over the dollops of filling.


Once you have all your pillows of filling set up, trim away the edges and cut the pasta into squares. Press the edges of the squares together to form a good seal (or else you may let water into your scrumptious filling).


Step 6: The Yummies. Put some water up to boil and prepare a sauce (I might suggest using the red wine sauce from my earlier post, although we just did a basic tomato marinara sauce).


Once the water is gently boiling, turn down the heat to medium or medium-high and drop in as much of the ravioli as will comfortably fit. We did ours in about two batches. You will be able to tell they're done once they're puffy and float to the surface. Scoop them out and put in the next batch.


At last, at long last, place ravioli in a bowl, slather with delicious sauce, and top with some freshly grated Parmesan.


Sorry to follow up all that typing with such a lousy photo of such a delicious dish. This is probably the first homemade pasta we ever made completely forsaking a recipe. While this sounds like a lot of work (indeed, it is more work than most of our recipes), it's honestly not as difficult as it sounds. The trickiest part is honestly just managing your time. This dish is more fun with a partner to help, but an adventurous sort could handle it on their own.

Have an excellent evening, and enjoy!

Just some pasta and tomato sauce....

Hey folks. I (Emily) was not about to get left out in the influx of new posts, so here we go. This was an endeavor Iain and I undertook back in August and just never got around to posting what with house hunting, new jobs, Fulbright Applications, etc. For the record, do not do this unless you have a lot of time open, like a Saturday or something. It's totally worth it though.

So, as you may remember, last summer I was the proud keeper of a backyard garden with a huge crop of basil. The result of this was a need, towards the end of the summer, to use up said basil. We made a ton of pesto and froze some leaves with oil in a jar, but even that didn't finish it off. Thus, we were left with the fortunate responsibility of using up the rest. In one of these endeavors, we decided to attempt homemade basil pasta.

Now, don't panic here. You've probably heard about hours and hours spent rolling paper thin sheets, cutting them up, and finding places for them to dry. And yeah, that's pretty legit, but ultimately it's less work than I thought it'd be, and it's also fun work.

Iain and I consulted a few sources when figuring out our recipe, but we ended up with a hodgepodge that I feel no guilt about posting up here. So, here's what ya need.

Ingredients

• several handfuls of fresh basil, chopped into small pieces
  
• one cup of flour per egg, more or less. I think we used four and four, and that made a ton of pasta.
• a pinch or two of salt

Pretty simple ingredients all in all, yes? If you don't have basil, you can use another herb or make it without, but the basil was pretty awesome. It's a summer thing though, I know, and pasta's good all year round. You could try it with spinach too, or even squash or something I bet. Anyway, off we go.

Procedure

• Pour the flour out onto the counter. You need a big counter space for this, both for mixing and rolling. If you don't have one, you might want to consider using a table instead.


• Push all the flour into a big mound and make a little well in the center by scooping some of the flour out and mounting it on the sides.

• Crack the eggs into the well. Well, don't crack them into the well. Crack them on the counter and open them into the well. Be careful so as not to breach the walls. It should look something like this:



• Carefully beat the eggs a bit with a fork, then start to incorporate some of the flour around them. Continue doing this, slowly in order to avoid breaking the walls, until the flour and eggs become a cohesive mass. You can add the basil when it feels manageable, like it won't make mixing impossible or just get all over the floor. For me, I think that was about halfway through. If you really feel like making green pasta, you can mix the flour and basil in the food processor, but I like the little green flecks better than I think I would a green noodle. However, if you're using squash or something, you'll definitely want to the use the food processor method. If you need to, add a bit of water or flour to get to the right texture. It shouldn't be so sticky that it's sticking to your hands, but you'll add flour during the rolling process, so it shouldn't feel dry either. Something like this.
  


• Now, this is the fun part if you're like Iain and enjoy rolling things out. For me, this is the not-so-fun part. But it's still worth it. Split the dough into manageable chunks (I think we did four, but it depends on the size of your rolling pin and counter space) and start rolling. This will take awhile. You need to get it pretty darn thin-- something in the realm of 1/8 inch. It depends on what pasta shape you're making. Of course, if you have a pasta machine, that takes care of it, but being poor and mobile, we do not. Go generous with the flour, both on the rolling surface and the rolling pin. Sticky pasta is sad pasta. It should look like this when it's done.
  


• This next bit is the fun part for me, because you get to shape it. We decided to do about half linguine/fettuccini (depending on how thick our strips were) and half farfalle. There are a few ways to make strip-style pastas. One is to take each bit of rolled out dough and just slice it into strips. Some will be longer than others, but don't worry about it. If memory serves me correctly, this was Iain's preferred method. I liked the jelly roll method myself. Basically, take a piece of rolled out dough and roll it tightly lengthwise or widthwise, depending on how long you want your pasta. Then cut off strips about 1/8-1/4 inch thick and unroll them into pasta. It won't look perfect, but it works.
  For the farfalle, cut pasta into little rectangles about 1 in x 2 in and pinch the middle of each together with thumb and forefinger to form the bow ties. You won't be able to use all of each pasta sheet for this shape, since you need the rectangles for it to work, so make the edges into short linguine or something.
  
• Now it's drying time. For the farfalle, baskets work really well, but we didn't have any, so we just left them on plates in single layers. For the linguine, coat hangers worked surprisingly well,although we had to be careful when centering the noodles on so they wouldn't fall right off. We let the noodles dry for perhaps three or four hours, and that seemed sufficient. The farfalle kept in an airtight container for a few days beyond that. It might have been good for longer, but we didn't want to take the risk, so we ate it.

That evening, it was show time. We put up a pot of water to boil and got started on a simple sauce. The chances of us ever buying tomato sauce again are nil to none, because canned tomatoes work so well. We threw a can of diced ones into a saucepan with some diced up onion, garlic, dried oregano, more fresh basil, olive oil, and crushed red pepper, let it simmer up for a bit, and voila-- cheap and awesome sauce.

Fresh pasta only takes about five minutes to boil, or at least ours did. The coat hanger linguine took a bit of maneuvering to get into the water, since it was bent in half, but we got it without much, if any, breakage. However, if you plan to gift the fresh pasta before it's cooked, you might want to dry it on something that will allow it to stay straight. I've heard towels work well.

And there you have it. Fresh, homemade pasta and tomato sauce. The stuff is filling too. It's so eggy! So make it when you get the chance, and happy Halloween to all!! (I'm gonna be a Jedi).