Christmas in July?

No but the colors red pasta againast green carrot tops and garlic made us say ho ho ho


  Here they're chopped by the lovely assistant chef.
 The pasta -- did tomato and garlic.
  Tada!

Flesh Eating Pasta!

 Well, stramgely flsh-colored anyway.

 

 

Green with...

 Parsley! My first attempt at green pasta. Easy as cherry pie!

Send up the Kites!

 By way of experiment, in which I tried to build a complete putanesca sauce directly into the pasta, with limited success.

 

The key thing here was to get all the ingredients into the pasta. Little salty fish (here, sardines) olives, and garlic. Finally settled on a plan, would incorporate only the fish into the pasta, after breaking it down into a puree and adding steaming heaps of garlic.

 Anybody who wants to try it again, let me know. The fish came out a bit musty and faint, through definitely present. I think the flavor needs to be brought forward not only with garlic but with lemon zest perhaps, or fennel.

It lives!

I'm a little behind (no pun intended) on our efforts for the last 3 weeks or so.

So much pasta, so little time.





We had special guest cooks this particular evening, which we didn't actually capture on film. Andrew Blythe, renowned chef, and Alison Durant, designer of all things living. They were extraordinary in our quest for past perfection, Andrew in his zeal for bacon fact, and Alison in her understanding of fabric and its manipulation in the quest of a perfect seam. We have photos of neither, but we may invite them back for more pictures.

The lovely noodles. Here sort of blond and off-blond.

And Paige, weary from her labors, shares the pasta chair with her stringy little friends.

The sauce was a combination of fresh fennel, sliced thin, and a pound of bacon.

The thing taste like God. And God is as we know quite generous sometimes.

Have to remember to take pictures of actual food not just ingredients. Remind me sometime, whill you?

Eruca sativa, baby!

To you and me it's arugula. Though I grew up with my mother calling it 'rockets.'

Used the hand blender and a tablespoon of olive oil. Color was nice and smooth. I hesitate to put in too much but an interesting experiment would be to see exactly how much you could put into the dough without having it completely fall apart or lose its texture.

Makes you say hmm.

But I'll settle for ymmmm.

Notes on the Proper Storage of Fresh Pasta

Oh the Horror!

We were utterly stoked after our fresh ricotta pasta. Man was it good -- perfectly cooked, light butter, the fresh creaminess against the asparagus.

Then hell broke loose.

"I'll just stick it into the fridge," I said.

(Idiot that I was. Idiot!)

"Don't forget the parchment paper."

"Okay. Right."

The next day we proudly took the pasta from the fridge. And looked it looked like walking death. Nasty stuff, mummified, curling and dry.

Takeaways:

Only make what you need when you need it.

Hey we found out how easy it was.

R. I. P. Ricotta Pasta

"R" stands for Fabulous

Well, okay, ricotta actually. We made fresh ricotta for our first batch of ravioli. It was a little intimidating but the fresh spring quality of the filling was spectacular. This report in two parts, cheese first:



We heat the milk -- carefully to 180 degrees...

Adding the vinegar freaks the milk curd into submission...

After a few hours we slotted-spoon out the curd into cheese cloth...

And ta-da! We're formagiers (or whatever they call them.

Phew! Total time about 2 hours from pouring milk to beautiful fresh ricotta.

Next we'll talk about the ravioli!





Making the dough, and letting it breathe deeply for 20 minutes...

...rolling the dough into 10 cm strips...

...and the strips into squares...

...the stuffing! Our ricotta, blanched asparagus sliced to 1 cm, a little salt.




Don't have a picture of our stuffing these. We thought next time it could be just a wee damper.

Hmmm. Served with butter and a little loose asparagus for garnish.