Week 14, Day 1: Pasta

I’m not going to get into any of the historical aspects of pasta here; there seems to be a bit of an ongoing debate as to where pasta actually comes from and my intention is not to add fuel to any raging fire. Many people think that the Italians were the ones to invent pasta while some argue that it was actually the Chinese that should receive the credit. For our purposes, we focused on the Italian style of pasta today, as opposed to the Chinese ‘noodle’ , which in theory is just like pasta in terms of it’s composition. Let’s also forget about trying to classify pasta according to shape and size since there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of different varieties. In class, we divided pasta into two main groups: dried and fresh.

Dried pasta is made up of water, flour, and salt. Seems simple enough but there are a few important factors to consider when discussing quality dried pasta. First is the type of wheat used, durum, a hard wheat, slightly yellowish in color that is finely milled in order to create semolina. Traditionally speaking, it is the use of durum that will allow pasta to achieve the desired ‘al dente’ mouthfeel when cooked (usually by boiling). Other flours yield pastas that are softer when cooked. When the ingredients are combined, the dough is very tough to knead by hand, so most dried pasta is formed by mixing machines and then shaped by extruding machines (allowing dried pasta to be made in a variety of hollow shapes). It is the material used to make the actual die (the part of the machine that controls the shape of the pasta) for the extruder machine that also has an effect on the quality of the pasta. Ideally, the die should be made of brass, which has a slightly ‘rough’ shape. This rough shape is imprinted on the pasta as it is forced through the die of the machine, creating miniature grooves and ripples that allow whatever sauce you apply to the pasta to adhere to it. The drying process also can affect pasta quality; if pasta is dried out too quickly or dried out in an environment without enough humidity, it may crack when drying or during cooking. There is no need to thumb our collective noses at dried pasta as there are many good dried pastas that can be found in most supermarkets. Additionally, as we’d all learn today, making fresh pasta is labor intensive. Plus, dried pasta affords options and convenience; I can’t really think of a way to make elbow macaroni or penne by hand, nor would I ever want to embark on such on an exercise in futility when I can just walk the 5 minutes to my local supermarket and pick up a box of Barilla pasta and be done with it.

Fresh pasta is a little different than dried pasta. Because durum is hard to work with when making pasta by hand, we made our fresh pastas in class with all purpose flour. We also used eggs and oil as the wet ingredients (instead of water), with the eggs providing richness and color and the oil providing a bit of flavor and also serving somewhat as an insurance policy, helping to keep the pasta dough supple and helping to keep the pasta from drying out too much while we worked with it. While you can employ the services of a kitchenaid to make pasta dough, in class we would use our hands and employ the ‘well’ technique. First, we poured out flour onto the counter top, then formed it into the shape of a wreath, leaving the center of the wreath flour free (this is the ‘well’). Whole eggs, oil, and salt were poured into the well and beaten with fork to break up the eggs and combine everything. Once the wet ingredients were combined, we used the fork to basically flick the flour into the wet ingredients, working outward beginning from the area closest to the wet ingredients. Eventually, the mixture in the center could no longer be worked with a fork; at that point we switched to a bench scraper and eventually our hands, working only as much flour into the dough in order to make it soft and not-sticky. Then we kneaded our doughs by hand for a few minutes until enough gluten had developed so that a fingerprint placed in the dough would spring right back. Then we allowed our doughs to rest and worked on our sauces/fillings.

Today I made Chitarra alla Vongole:

The pasta is named after the contraption used to form it, a chitarra, a wooden frame that is strung with metal wires and resembles something like a mutant guitar. Using a pasta rolling attachment for a kitchenaid mixer, I first had to roll out my pasta into sheets of an appropriate thickness. With the pasta rolled out into thin sheets, I could then lay it out onto the surface of the chitarra’s metal wires and press the pasta into the wires, which would cut the pasta into small strands. By ‘strumming’ the wires, the small strips of pasta were released and the process was repeated until I had cut all of my pasta sheets. Note, this picture below is not me (the fingernails are far too manicured and the fingers are far too non sausage-like to be mine), but it demonstrates the process of using the chitarra. I helped myself to this image…if you are the rightful owner of it, congrats on finding my awesome blog. I will happily remove the image if you so desire.

The sauce for my pasta dish was made by sauteing diced pancetta until it turned brown and crispy. To that I added finely diced carrot and zucchini, sliced green onions, minced garlic, clams that had been cooked in white wine, pernod, and fumet (fish stock), plus some of the liquid that the clams cooked in. When the pasta was cooked to an ‘al dente’ stage, I tossed it right into the sauce and served it immediately. Overall, I was pleased with the dish. The clam cooking liquid on its own was incredibly salty, but once combined with the pasta, I thought it was all well seasoned. I would’ve liked a bit more garlic in the final dish and Chef S suggested that some lemon juice (or something else acidic) would’ve also been a nice addition. For all the times I’ve had and made linguine with white clam sauce, I can’t believe that I didn’t think of that. Oh well, after last week’s display of total ineptitude during my baking classes, I was happy that my pasta was relatively palatable and I managed to make it without burning anything or anyone.

Pappardelle w/ Rabbit Ragout:

A ragout is essentially a very thick meat sauce, usually beginning with something along the lines of a mirepoix (pancetta, onions and carrots). Then some sort of tomato product is added, crushed tomatoes here. The meat, rabbit in this case, is cooked separately, shredded, and added to the sauce and it all cooks together until the flavors are incorporated. Cooked pasta is tossed with a little of the ragout, then more ragout is spooned over the top right before service.

Lasagna filled with Swiss Chard and Bechamel Sauce:

Note: lasagna traditionally refers to the type of noodle (a large, flat sheet of pasta) itself, not the dish.

Ravioli stuffed with Ground Veal and served with a Tomato Cream Sauce:

Finally, Tortellini with a Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato filling served with a Sage and Butter Sauce:

Needless to say, I went on a total carb binge today. I just couldn’t help myself, everyone’s food really tasted good. I feel like I say that every week, and I guess I should, seeing that we’re all in our 14th week of culinary school and we all know what were doing at this point. As mentioned above, dried pastas are traditionally made with durum flour while our fresh pastas were made with all purpose flour. Does that mean that our pastas were limp and mushy? Not really, I thought that everyone cooked their pasta really well and everyone’s sauces also came out well. Too me, our pastas felt more ‘delicate’ than some store bought pasta I’ve had in the past, but I think that may be due in part to the thickness of our pastas, which in my opinion were thinner than a lot of the pasta shapes I usually buy (penne being a long time favorite of mine). I don’t know if I’ll be attempting to make my own fresh pasta at home anytime soon, but it was fun to learn how to do it totally by hand (well, except for the part where we used the kitchenaid to roll out the dough). Maybe when the time comes for me to really impress someone with my cooking skills, I’ll bust out the homemade pasta.