Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow

For the interested/serious homecook, there are many culinary milestones. Most of these milestones involve learning and honing a technical skill (such as boning a chicken or mincing garlic with the back of a knife at a breakneck speed - a vital skill that I have yet to accomplish) or making a certain dish or component of one. In that which concerns the latter, something that my angelheart Eric and I have long wanted to do is make pasta at home. Accompanied by my good friends the sassy sauciere queen Lily and the gardenia-loving epicure Titaina on a day of bone-chilling breezes and distant Winter light, I crossed a culinary goal off my list.

While dried pasta is a great convenience and shop-bought fresh pasta is typically of good quality, apparently nothing holds a candle to pasta made simply and quickly at home. The options are limitless for he or she who has long crossed the pasta-making divide before me. One can use almost any type of flour with almost any type of flavouring. But first things first, the following recounts our baby-steps into the world of making pasta from scratch (but for the milling of the flour and the gathering of eggs; however, this is as close to "from scratch" as most of us ever get, and technically, this is the spirit of the expression), as taught by the sassy sauciere queen Lily. (Funnily enough, the pasta-making machine was a gift to the sassy sauciere queen Lily from the gardenia-loving epicure Titaina, who probably had an ulterior motive at the time, but I'm sure she didn't expect it to take a good year or two before finding herself invited over for homemade pasta!)

The following amount of dough makes enough for four (that said, we had no pasta left over, but we were especially hungry and were so enamoured of our first group effort that there somehow managed to be more room for pasta in our bellies than usual).

Homemade Pasta

2 1/2 - 3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs

Yes, that's it!

1) In a medium-sized bowl, stir salt into 2 1/2 cups of the flour to combine well.
2) Add the eggs.
3) Combine with a fork until granules are formed. If the mixture is too dry, add water by 1 tablespoon increments. If the mixture is too moist, add extra flour by one tablespoon increments.
4) On a very lightly-floured surface, knead the granules into a ball.
5) Cover with cling-film and allow to rest for 30 minutes (it was a cool day, so we let the dough rest at room temperature for 20 minutes).
6) Most hand-cranked pasta machines have two sets of rollers: one to roll out the pasta dough, the other to cut the dough into a desire shape. We separated our ball of dough into 5 smaller balls.
7) Take one of the small balls, flatten with the palm of your hand.
8) Set the machine at the widest setting (number 1 on the sassy sauciere queen Lily's Marcato - made in Padua) and feed the flattened dough through it, turning the crank slowly. Fold the dough in three (as one did up until the late-90s when preparing letters for envelopes), and pass through again. Repeat once more.
9) Increase the setting by increments of one, passing the pasta dough once each time (you no longer need to fold the dough). The higher the setting, the narrower the setting becomes, creating very flat dough (the highest setting on our machine is 7). You will find that the pasta dough becomes shinier and that you have to pull it gently - otherwise it will fold and/or tear (only dust lightly with flour if you feel that the dough is too soft and is likely to stick to the machine).
9) Choose desired rollers for cutting the pasta (we chose fettuccine - long flat ribbons), and pass your long, flattened dough through the cutters. Place in a pile, with a mere pinch of flour to prevent sticking.
10) Repeat steps 7 to 9 with the remaining small balls.

One only needs to cook the pasta for two to three minutes until it is al dente. To ensure this is a quick process, bring a large pan or pot of heavily-salted water to a rolling boil before adding the pasta. If is is not boiling rapidly, there is a possibility of the pasta becoming water-logged and viscid.

The possibilities for pasta are endless with this egg dough. Instead of cutting it into fettuccine, the dough can be adapted for all types of pasta: other long pastas, such as pappardelle (wide ribbons) and tagliatelle; short pasta, such as garganelli and penne (both tubular pastas); flat pasta, such as lasagne and cannelloni; and filled pastas, such as tortelloni (large parcels), ravioli (square-filled pasta with fluted edges) and cappelletti (little hats). Apart from shapes, there are endless variations on flavourings also. One of the most intriguing to my mind is Stephane's semolina dough flavoured with beetroot and squid ink, which he combined into striped ravioli cases, "zebravioli". Clearly, you can let you imagination run free.

We, on the other hand, kept it simple with a topping a rustically grated parmesan after tumbling our fettuccine into a ragù (a meat sauce, which for us was made by sweating down an onion and two small bulbs on fennel in olive oil with thyme, to which was added two 450g/14oz cans of tomatoes plus 3/4 of its juice, 1 cup of beef broth and one bay leaf, brought to the boil and left at a steady simmer for 40 minutes, by which time the liquid was mostly absorbed by the mince). Homemade pasta is silken, light, and a joy to behold. We all felt like we were taking part in a time-honoured tradition, albeit with steel rolling pins and cranks to make life easier. That said, there is a great sense of accomplishment that comes from making pasta oneself. I would not recommend it when preparing for a crowd, but for a small lunch for three or four, it seems no big deal, especially when one can rope friends in for assistance. Seconds, ladies?

Labels: Fettuccine, Italian, Pasta

Sometimes being in between seasons is a bother. Do you carry an umbrella on a day that appears to be sunny? Do you leave behind a sweater because it might not be that cold? Do you risk going outdoors at all? Being in a liminal space such as this forces one to second guess. The same applies to cooking at these times of the year. I had one last, good Summer aubergine on hand, but I didn't want baba ghanouj or a smoky aubergine with barbecued meat...I decided to take the best of the Summer and combine it it with something that hints at the colder climes: a touch of cream.

I suppose today's offering is not only a "changing seasons" dish but is one that builds on the notion of compromise, for it marries northern and southern Italian ingredients - well, in my canvas of broad strokes it does.

Aubergine is very popular in Sicilian cooking, where it is used to carry and not compete with the salty and sweet combinations for which the glorious island of volcanic rock is famous: capers, chilis, vinegar, marsala...Aubergine is a recognised ingredient largely because of the international popularity of the Sicilian dishes: pasta alla Norma, a combination of aubergine, ricotta, tomatoes, basil and preferably either of these two pastas maccheroni or paccheri - the dish is named after the grandest work of Sicilian composer Bellini, Norma; and caponata, a fiery relish of fried aubergine and peppers mixed with celery, capers and olives bound with a bittersweet sauce of vinegar and sugar. What I largely associate with southern Italian preparations of pasta are tomatoes. And while tomatoes are also used in northern pastas, I tend to be lulled by the creaminess of their pasta dishes more than anything else - made so usually on account of cheese or cream itself.

Today is one of those grey but not cold days, where there is an autumnal chill in the air, enough of one to make you put on an extra layer, but it is not so cold that you're pining for stew and wearing two pairs of socks. A marriage of summery aubergine and a touch of comforting cream. (And I am sure by now, but especially following my post from 1 March, 2008, you know that fettuccine is my favourite pasta - you use whichever long pasta you prefer.) In the interest of meeting halfway, the hinge of all good and long-lasting relationships, I've added fennel seeds and fronds, which are popular in Roman cooking - the best fennel, itself, is purportedly from Florence, but that is only a minor detail of - remember? - generalisations.

The following recipe can serve four. As is typical of most of my recipes, I give you the steps in the order that I do things, so that the ingredients come together at once, which is easy if this is all you're preparing, which would be more than adequate for lunch.

Aubergine and Fennel Seed Fettuccine

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided use
1 1/2 tablespoons fennel seeds
500g/16oz aubergine, cut into bite-size pieces
salt & pepper
150ml/5fl. oz cream/heavy cream
1/4 cup parmesan, grated
1 1/2 tablespoons fennel fronds, chopped
350g/12oz fettuccine
extra parmesan (prepared with a vegetable peeler) and fennel fronds (chopped)

1) Boil water that is heavily seasoned with salt in a large pot.
2) Heat 1/2 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat. Add fennel seeds.
3) When the seeds give off an aroma, add the rest of the olive oil and the aubergine pieces. Toss together and cook until aubergine is very soft - 10 to 15 minutes.
4) In the meantime, the water should be boiling, so add pasta to the water. Follow the instructions of the pasta your purchase, if you do not make it yourself, as to when your chosen pasta should be al dente, or to your liking if you prefer it without the slightest resistance.
5) Season aubergine with salt and pepper.
6) Add the cream and parmesan over a very low heat.
7) When the cream bubbles lightly, remove from the heat and add fennel fronds. Stir to combine.
8) By now the pasta should be ready, so drain it in a colander and then add it to the creamy aubergine. Toss together and serve with shavings of parmesan and a scattering of chopped fennel fronds.

Bravissimo!

Well, only if you enjoy the aroma and finish attributed to anethole as I do - fennel, licorice, star anise, sambuca, you name it. Luscious, earthy, smacking of early Autumn in Oceania, this comforts without any gastronomic suffocation. Of course, the perfect match is Sicilian nero d'avola, which is typically medium of body with notes of figs and pepper.

While I eagerly anticipate the Fall bounty to come, I particularly love being caught in-between seasons and blurring boundaries.

Labels: Aubergine, Fennel fronds, Fennel seeds, Italian, Pasta, Sicily

Susan over at The Well-Seasoned Cook, my absolute favourite blog, is hosting an event for which one is to cook a dish from a film: Food in Film. For those of you who have read my previous post, one can see that the difference between the two food events is that this one is more specific insofar as a strong connection must exist between the dish one is making and the film that inspired the dish. I sought the advice of my angelheart Eric, my constant soundboard, because I was stumped.

I thought of making Chinese takeout, perhaps to eat in bed out of wire-handled cardboard-containers à la Woody Allen's Manhattan. My angelheart Eric pulled out every DVD we had and recounted directly a dish eaten in the film or a dish that is referred to in an important scene. Our hearts melted as soon as he pulled out The Apartment.

In this Hollywood classic from 1960, Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, career guy with a conscience. On account of making available his apartment to his superiors for their conjugal extra-marital relations, he climbs the ladder rather quickly - no one seriously climbs the ladder through actually working hard, do they? After getting pneumonia from sleeping in Central Park one night, Baxter decides enough is enough and no longer wants to loan out his apartment. Unbeknownst to him, his rapid rise through the ranks catches the attention of philandering chief executive, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who inquires about using the apartment. Baxter's career aspirations win out over his conscience, which, as Hollywood movies often tell us, leads to a life lesson for him to learn about selling out.

One night during the Christmas season, he returns to his apartment and finds one of the sassy yet sweet elevator girls, Fran (Shirley Maclaine), has attempted suicide. After having her stomach pumped, she is ordered to stay with Baxter for 24 hours until she is given the all-clear. As far as Baxter is concerned, they are 24 magical hours, in which he redeems himself, made tangible by doting on the adorable Fran, whose heart is badly broken by Sheldrake.

During these 24 hours, Fran cleans Baxter's socks (only finding 3.5 pairs), his apartment, and comes across a tennis racquet in the kitchen. She asks him about this unusual piece amongst the batterie de cuisine, and it turns out he uses it as a pasta strainer. With the hope of winning Fran's heart, Baxter sets about making his specialty, meatballs served with spagehtti and meat sauce.

Meatballs and spaghetti are a Neapolitan classic. I have, however, made my ragù according to a Bolognese recipe, for it is less spicy and, for me, more aromatic. It is meat overkill to make both ragù and meatballs, but it is was Baxter served to Fran. The ragù seems a little fiddly for only one pound of pasta, so feel free to multiply the given quantities for a larger yeild. I only made one change in the recipe and that was to substitute bison for beef with 15% fat content. Depending on the size of your palms, Mario Batali's Polpette alla Napoletana recipe yields 12-15 meatballs.

Ragù alla Bolognese, Ricetta Antica
(From Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's Lidia's Family Table)

For one pound of spaghetti, use:
5oz ground bison
5oz ground pork
1/3 cup white wine
1oz bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 fat clove garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 medium onion, finely chopped
1/3 stalk celery, finely chopped
1/6 carrot, shredded
salt
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2/3 cup milk
nutmeg
1/3 cup hot water (you could use turkey broth) - may not be required
black pepper, freshly ground

1) In a large mixing bowl, crumble up and loosen the meats with your fingers.
2) Pour white wine over the meat, combine until evently moistened.
3) Make a pestata: in a food processor, mince together the bacon and garlic until a paste in formed.
4) Put 1/3 tablespoon olive oil in heavy-bottomed saucepan that will be wide enough to accomodate your meat. Over medium-high heat, add the pestata and cook until aromatic and the fat has been rendered.
5) Add another 1/3 tablespoon of olive oil, then throw in the onion and leave to sweat, approximately 4 minutes.
6) Add final 1/3 tablespoon of olive oil, and add carrot and celery. Cook until they have broken down/wilted and are golden in colour.
7) Turn heat up to high, move vegetables to a cool spot in the pan, and add the meat and liquid. Brown the beat and evaporate all of the liquid. This took me approximately 15 minutes. Add salt for seasoning.
8) In a separate pan, scald the milk, then shut off the heat, move off the element, and cover to keep warm.
9) On a hot spot in the pan with the meat, toast the tablespoon of tomato paste, before stirring it into the meat and aromatics.
10) Ladle 1/3 of the milk into the saucepan, mostly covering the meat. Grate nutmeg of preferred quantity (for me, half a teaspoon) into the pan and stir into the meat. When an active simmer is reached, put heat on low and cover.
11) From here the ragù should cook for approximately one hour (if using more meat, say 4 pounds total, this could take as long as three hours). Check every 20 minutes, ladle more milk to cover the meat. If you find more instead of less additions of liquid are required, not only prepare to heat water (or turkey broth), but think to reduce heat further also. If you find no liquid is required after every twenty minute interval, turn the heat up. Stir well after every addition of liquid.
12) The final result should be just a hint of liquid pooling around the meat. Crank one tablespoon of black pepper over the meat and cook for a couple of minutes.
13) If using immediately, spoon out the fat or stir it into the meat (which is the traditional way). If you are not using it immediately, let it cool before chilling it, after which you can remove the solidified fat and store the ragu in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for a few months.

Polpette alla Napoletana
(From Mario Batali's Molto Italiano)

3 cups of 1-inch cubes of day-old bread
1 1/4 pounds ground beef
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 pecorino romano, freshly grated
1/4 cup parsley, finely chopped
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper, freshly ground
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1) In a shallow bowl, soak bread cubes in water to cover for 20 minutes. Drain the cubes and squeeze out excess water.
2) In a large bowl, combine soaked bread cubes with the rest of the ingredients, except the olive oil. Form meatballs with wet hands to prevent sticking.
3) In a heavy-bottom frying pan/skillet, heat olive oil over high, almost to smoking point, and cook meatballs until deep golden brown. Cook in batches to prevent overcrowding, which will result in steaming the meatballs and which won't allow for crust to form on the exterior of the meatballs. It should take approximately 10 minutes to brown each meatball.

Served with one pound of pasta, the ragù and the meatballs definitely were too much. The ragù in fact was a little dry once it had been worked into the spaghetti, which I think is on account of using meat with a low percentage of fat. Furthermore, though it smelled great when simmering, the ragù was spread quite thin, and I think it would have been best to use the Ricetta Tradizionale, which incorporates tomatoes. The polpette, on the other hand, were richly flavoured - the combination of pecorino romano and pine nuts is earthy and nutty.

Sadly, Baxter and Fran never get around to eating the meatballs and spaghetti, but I won't spoil the end of the film for you. Watch The Apartment for yourself to see if they end up together.

Post script See the round-up of Susan's food blog event, Food In Film.

Labels: Beef, Bison, Italian, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Mario Batali, Meatballs, Pasta

This is a "kill two birds with one stone" post (never literally...after all, one uses a rifle to kill pheasant, not a slingshot). I have only ever used chickpeas either in hummus or in a Tyler Florence contorni whereby chickpeas comingle languorously on the stovetop with cauliflower, tomatoes, ginger, curry powder, and coriander (from Eat This Book: Cooking with Global Fresh Flavors). I felt it was time for me to update my repertoire. Also, it has been remiss of me not to participate in Ruth's weekly blog event Presto Pasta Nights.

This post is also a bit of a lesson. Though I have not yet acquired vast experience in the kitchen, I have developed some sensory awareness that was previously veiled (more like shut and locked away; there was a time when I actually did not want anything to do with the kitchen because it seemed most people I knew had a knack of pulling things off, and all I ever constructed was tantamount to a series of disasters). The recipe that I chose to follow looked enticing, but I never really thought about what was going into it. All I wanted to do was to use chickpeas a different way and to make a pasta dish at the same time. In hindsight, the two do not belong together, or at least not in this form.

Before this experience, I had never used a Jamie Oliver recipe, and I am not going to bite his ear off. I have to take the blame for this. I amended two details right off the mark - because I was not making a meat dish, I opted for vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, and I used small seashell pasta instead of ditalini. Combined, this is perhaps where I went wrong because the pasta and chickpeas absorbed most of the stock, requiring the addition of boiling water from the kettle (Mr. Oliver advises this might be necessary in the recipe), but there is not enough flavor in a vegetable stock. I mean, the point of vegetable stock is to be a light background note in a soup with a suspicion of the vegetables used to make it (i.e. I don't think you are meant to be able to recognize its constituent parts). This lent uninspiring blandness to the soup. Additionally, the chosen pasta may have absorbed more of the liquid on account of its greater surface size, but it does not really look that much bigger than ditalini. Now I am getting ahead of myself...

Pasta e Ceci
(From Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italy)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 stick celery, trimmed and finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 sprig of fresh rosemary, leaves finely chopped
2 450g/14oz cans of chickpeas, drained well and rinsed in water
2 1/4 cups vegetable stock (Mr. Oliver suggests chicken stock)
100g/3 1/2oz small seashell pasta (Mr. Oliver prefers ditalini)
sea salt
black pepper, freshly ground

1) Into a saucepan on your lowest setting, put the olive oil, onion, celery, garlic, and rosemary. Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally (the aromas coming out of the pot when stirring are redolent of Spring, sadly not a harbinger of things to come).
2) When the vegetables are soft, toss in the chickpeas and cover with stock.
3) Cook for 40 minutes, still on a very gentle heat. (Mr. Oliver says 30 minutes, but in my experiece that was not sufficient time for the chickpeas to soften.)
4) Remove half of the chickpeas with a slotted spoon and put aside.
5) Blitz the soup, add it back into the pot followed by the whole chickpeas that were reserved.
6) Add the pasta and season with salt and pepper. Before adding the pasta, make sure the chickpeas are on the verge of being soft (but not mushy).
7) Once the pasta is cooked, check the water level. If the soup is too thick for your liking, add water from a recently boiled kettle.
8) Season as you please with additional salt and pepper and throw in some parsley or basil if you have some handy.

There is bland liquid somewhere in this soup, I assure you! It was not until I took my first bite that I realized all I would taste was starch. Of course. I thought at the outset that the pasta and chickpeas are both neutral ingredients needing a lot of help to eek out flavor. They both act as vessels for flavor, neither one imparting much of their own. This is a great dish if you have a cold and cannot taste anything or if you want fiber without eating spinach. Perhaps this would have been a treat, as Jamie Oliver calls it, had I followed his instructions directly, but if I just wanted an awesome broth, I would have been better off making chicken stock and knaidlach for matzo ball soup.

Sorry for the uninspiring debut, Ruth!

Labels: Chickpeas, Jamie Oliver, Pasta, Presto Pasta Nights