Boiling+Pasta


 * Boiling Pasta**

My second recipe! I'm still learning to boil but this time I'm boiling pasta. I already know how to boil pasta (because the directions are on the box, not in my mom's cookbook) but I've never made fresh pasta. James Beard doesn't have much to say about fresh pasta. Just that it takes two to three minutes to cook (in a pot of boiling salted water.) So I am branching out. I'm using supplemental "textbooks."

So I'll use [|this recipe] for the pasta part. I love that all the //Bon Appétit// recipies are on the epicurious website, but when I cut this recipe out of the September 2006 //Bon Appétit// it had way more pictures. And the pictures actually helped to explain the rolling-out-the-pasta-with-your-fingers part. This is really helpful because I don't own a pasta machine.

And I looked at [|allrecipies] (I love this website, it's been so good to me) because their articles are usually really good. I read this [|tutorial] about making the fresh pasta dough. Then //Bon Appétit// recipe explains how to shape the dough (the pictures really do help.) And James Beard says to cook the pasta for a few minutes. This will be Monday's project.

I'm not sure about the sauce yet. We have tomatoes in the garden. And basil now! We didn't have basil until last week because as mommy dearest tells me, "the seeds didn't come up," which means she forgot to plant basil and just wants me to stop complaining. I can't help complaining - bruschetta with dried basil just isn't the same and homemade pizza is so much better with fresh basil. But we also have pumpkin from last year in the freezer. Maybe I'll make a couple of sauces and we can have lots of little samples.

Pasta! I made it Monday and we ate it in school Tuesday and it was really yummy. I liked it but some of my friends thought the noodle were too thick.

I mixed the pasta dough by hand. So I made a well in the flour and poured in the water and olive oil. (But no eggs, this recipe din't use eggs, which apperently is a little bit different than regular fresh pasta.) Then I stirred it with a bread spoon. Bread spoons are an amazing invention. I'ts like a wooden spoon with a hole in the middle, which makes it easier to stir dough. Then I let the dough rest for an hour.

While I let the dough rest, I started making sauces. I took the pumpkin purée out of the freezer and started reducing it. Then I cut up my tomatoes and seeded them and started reducing that. To the pumpkin, I added cream and some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice) and salt. Then I finished it off with some butter. To the tomatoes, I added salt and pepper and a little sugar and then fresh basil. Fresh Basil! Then I made a [|roasted red pesto]based on this recipe that I cut out of my paper a while ago. But I didn't use the scallops and I used my own pasta. Then I took some of the extra garlic from the red pepper pesto (I halved the recipe but toasted 2 cloves of garlic) and sautéed it in olive oil. Then I took cheese (just the shredded Kraft, nothing exciting) into school with me and when I reheated the pasta the pasta with the olive oil and garlic, I added some chesse and let it get nice and melty.

So after I made the sauces, I started forming the dough into noodles. First, I sliced a little bit of dough of the main ball of dough. Then, I rolled it into a little snake. Next, I cut the snake into lots of little pieces. Then I took each individual piece and pushed down with my fingers while I pulled the noodle towards me. After that I twisted the noodle around and did the same thing to the other side. So the noodles looked like little zitis but with a slit in one side. These tasted great but they took forever to make. I don't think I would make them again; I guess pasta is something you would only make once, unless you own a pasta maker or are really crazy.

After I formed all the little pasta noodles (Which my librarian tells me are known as cavetelli, the recipe I used just called them homemade pasta. You learn something new everyday!) I boiled them. Which was when they all puffed up and got really thick. I didn't boil them for ten minutes like the recipe says. I just spooned them out when they floated to the top. And I boiled them in lots of little batches because it took me forever to drop them in one by one and I was worried the first ones would be done before I droped the last one in.


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