Thursday, October 18, 2012

Save a Step Cooking Quick Takes

or: Priest's Wife needs an intervention so she will start using actual recipes!
Rosie of Like Mother, Like Daughter made fresh pasta and posted about it. I thought why not? I did a little searching and discovered that pasta is basically 3 cups flour to 4 eggs, so I went with that and tried my luck.
The little ones helped with cracking the eggs and dumping flour into the Kitchenaid.
Then, I realized that my rolling pin was packed away in a box. What to do? We used a water bottle and then used a meat smasher to get the pasta as thin as possible.
This is what we made with half of the pasta dough. I used leftover chicken broth and Italian sauage, added carrots, spinach and the pasta. It was good, but the pasta was more like dumplings. I suppose you really need a pasta press to get it thin enough to be called pasta.
Daughter #2 really hates cheese. Yes, I know...Sometimes I accommodate her preferences, so I made cheese-free lasagna for her- pasta sheets with jarred marinara.
Next time, I promise I will look and see if I have the ingredients for a real recipe. Our lasagna was made with a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella (the brick was pre-mixed) and cottage cheese (no ricotta in the house). We were eating chicken and broccoli, so I made a meatless lasagna with green onions, green pepper and a bit of arugula. It was pretty tasty, but I am glad we didn't have guests. It is a family joke that I try new fake recipes out on unsuspecting guests. I like to live on the edge.
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. 
--J. R. R. Tolkien 
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body. 
--Benjamin Franklin 
"’Eat my flesh,’ [Jesus] says, ‘and drink my blood.’ The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients, he delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children" 
--St. Clement of Alexandria

8 comments:

  1. I used to have a pasta maker and LOVED fresh pasta. Doing it by hand is way too much work for me, though - props to you for going to all that trouble! Maybe someday I'll run across another pasta maker at a garage sale, but until then it's the boxed stuff for me :)

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    1. jammie girl- I am just so sick of all the packaging I am throwing away- I am thinking an attachment for my kitchen aid will make the project much easier

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    2. Priest's Wife,

      If you get that attachment, let us know how it goes. This is something I've been interested in trying.

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    3. depending on the cost, I might have to wait until Christmas

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  2. My mom ate a lot of pasta when she was pregnant with me, I like eating it too, so she says I got it from her.
    Have gone to international/Korean supermarkets in the metro DC, there are plenty of types of Asian noodles that would make the pasta section you see at a chain supermarket look small by comparison!

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    1. A Japanese student of mine makes buckwheat noodles- by hand- they look beautiful..I think it takes a lot of experience

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  3. I wrote you a long reply... and the internet lost it!!!! In short, rolling out pasta by hand takes lots of practice. Your proportion of flour to egg seems off. I usually use about 1 cup flour to two large eggs (roughly). You want the dough to be saturated but not sticky (got that?) A wetter dough is much easier to hand roll- and I am sure that a rolling pin will help in your labor, so that you can throw your back into it. :) Fresh pasta is wonderfully different and interacts with the sauce differently (it is absorbent!) You should try Marcella Hazan's "Butter and cream sauce" (aka, alfredo) with fresh pasta. http://gratineeblog.com/2010/09/marcella-hazans-fettuccine-in-cream-and-butter-sauce-served-with-grilled-jumbo-prawns/
    Recommended Reading: "The Art of Simple Foods" Alice Waters and "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan. She has an amazing tutorial for handmade pasta, the library ought (*needs*) to have it.

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