Fresh Pasta

For the very first time in my life this evening I made fresh pasta from scratch. I can't for the life of me figure out why it's taken me this long. I've been a lover of pasta my entire life (my mom will vouch for that), and it's never occurred to me how simple, affordable, and delicious homemade pasta can be. I have had fresh pasta before in restaurants and once bought fresh pasta at St Lawrence Market here in Toronto. I've never quite had pasta the way I did this evening for dinner. It's ridiculously simple! Check this out...

Per serving you need...

1.5 cups of pastry or cake flour
2 large eggs
3-4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

It's just a matter of making a "well" with the flour and cracking an egg in the middle of the hole. Add the olive oil to the egg and whisk together with a fork. Slowly incorporate flour from the walls of the well into the egg. It will begin to form a workable dough. Once it's clumpy enough to use your hands, knead the dough into a ball. Knead the ball of dough for an additional six minutes or so. When you're finished, the dough should be thoroughly combined, a bit springy, and have kind of "elastic" qualities. Rub a bit more olive oil over the ball of dough and just let it sit in a covered bowl for half an hour. Kneading the dough is necessary to get the required texture for pasta but it puts a lot of stress on the flour. Leaving it to rest for thirty minutes will allow it to relax and be much more cooperative for the next step.

When your dough is nicely rested, place it on a lightly floured surface and roll it flat with a rolling pin. If you don't have a rolling pin, use a wine bottle (or if your olive oil is in a cylindrical bottle, use that!). Roll the dough into a sheet about 2 milometers thick. Lightly flour your surface, dough, and rolling device as often as needed. Using a sharp knife, trim any excess dough on the sides and make a rectangle. Then it's just a matter of rolling the sheet into a cigar-like shape and slicing the pasta into ribbons, like you would a chiffonade of basil. Toss the noodles in a little more flour, to keep them from sticking to one another, and you are set!

For a perfect al dente, fresh pasta only takes about 90 seconds in salted, boiling water to cook. Once it's drained you can do whatever you like with it: tomato sauce, cream sauce, pesto, garlic and oil, etc, etc... you're the boss of your sauce 

For this particular dish I threw together a really simple white sauce with a bit of olive oil, butter, cream, garlic, onion, and basil. After some fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, I was left with a satisfying and rich vegetarian entrée.

If you haven't tried to make this before, please do. I don't see any reason to ever buy pasta again. You may not either. Especially when you can make something like this for next to nothing:

What a treat. I can't wait to show this off the next time I get to cook for someone else. 

Thanks for reading, take good care of yourself, be happy and stay fed.

B

Blogger's note: "Al dente" translated to English literally means "to the tooth". Meaning that al dente pasta has a slight firmness. Pasta should have a bit of chew to it. Nobody in the right mind likes mushy, overcooked pasta. 

August 20 - Asian stuffed pork tenderloin and coleslaw

Sweet 'n' spicy stuffed pork tenderloin served with Asian coleslaw tossed in a tangy peanut sauce, and a Sambal and oyster sauce demi-glace.

I experimented with an idea I had for an east meets west dish. I made a stuffed pork tenderloin and coleslaw using a basic French method with East Asian flavours.The stuffing was a mixture of breadcrumbs, onion, carrot, celery, chilies, garlic, cilantro, eggs, Sambal, Chinese 5 spice (Szechuan peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, fennel, and star anise), extra fennel seeds, salt and pepper. Rolled it up, tied it with string and seared it on all sides in a pan. Once it was sealed all over, a quick glaze of an oyster sauce reduction and straight into a 375F (190C) oven for half an hour. 

Afterwards while the meat was resting I deglazed the pan with some water, oyster sauce, Sambal, ginger root slices and a little brown sugar. I let that boil down and reduce to a little passed half. Then heat turned off, melted a knob of butter and stirred in. After removing the ginge and replacing with a dose of sliced scallions, the sauce was done.

Prior I had made a coleslaw with cabbage, carrot, red pepper, scallion, cilantro, and sesame seeds. I mixed the sauce out of natural peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and sunflower oil. 

It was fun to make and turned out really good. It looks like a bit of a mess in the photo. I haven't mastered rolling stuffing into meat yet. Never the less, an interesting dining experience.

Be happy and stay fed,

B

August 20, 2012 - Fresh green tea-coconut ice cream

My buddy and neighbour has an ice cream maker. We'd been planning this for a while but finally got around to it this passed weekend. My favourite ice cream flavour has got to be green tea. It's so cool, refreshing, and delicate. The flavours are subtle but have a lingering finish. The perfect finale to a great sushi dinner.

I had it in my head that green tea ice cream would be great if infused with the flavour of coconut. We made a custard with egg yolks, milk, golden sugar, a couple drops of coconut extract and matcha powder that had been diluted in a little warm water. In a separate bowl, we whisked a bit of air into whipping cream and then mixed in the green tea-coconut custard. The whole mixture then went into the ice cream maker which chilled and churned in for about an hour until it was the consistency of "soft serve" (a very soft ice cream product served in many fast food burger chains across North America). All it took was a few hours in the freezer and then we had two pints of perfect, fresh, homemade ice cream. 

This was such a fantastic summer treat. I'm already buzzing with ideas for other kinds of ice cream we can make. So stay tuned for that!

Be happy and stay fed,

B

August 13, 2012 - Disclaimer

Hey guys. I haven't been posting much lately, sorry about that. Part of it being that for some reason the blog host, blogger.com, keeps highlighting some of my text when I don't want it to. I don't know how to change it. All I can do is change the colour of the highlight but I can't match it to the background. My apologies for the unsightly appearance of the passed few posts. Hopefully it won't be like this for long!

Be happy and stay fed,

B

August 13, 2012 - Bad Beef

I usually buy my groceries at markets and the butcher shop in my neighbourhood. Because of an annual Greek festival on my street this passed weekend I had to go to grocery chain, Loblaws, for my groceries this week. I saw this poster in the meat section. My phone was charging at home at the time so I made a point to go back today to take a photo and share this with you. 

This ad insults the intelligence of any customer who knows about food. Cows eat GRASS, not corn. Corn provides the same nutritional value to cows as it does to us (not much- starch and sugar). Corn is fed to animals in factory farms where animals are kept unhealthy for the benefit of mass production and financial gain. What this poster is saying is "We sell the meat of unhealthy, fattened cows who are brought up in factories with poor living conditions and we have no conscience about it". Advertising corn fed beef is just as uneducated and irresponsible as indicating aspartame on a product as a positive selling point. We know better now. Buy your meat from reputable butchers!!!