NEW RSS feed! | Wed 02.20.08 |
fettucini |
Virginia tends to be gray in February. My coworkers have been saying that come spring, flowers pop up everywhere and everything becomes brilliantly lush, which, oddly enough, made me think of vegetable purees.
Last summer some friends of mine decided to throw a big party/art show and asked if I had anything I could do. I made these different colored fettucini by mixing in various pureed vegetables into a basic egg pasta dough -- from left to right they are carrot and shallot, beet, dried tomato, spinach, black olive, and orange rind with mint -- and hung them on a modified piano rack (provided by my spiffy hosts) to dry over the three-day period. I was pretty pleased with the result, and surely the credit goes to the vegetables themselves. Nature gives you some gnarly colors to work with.
I had tried to make a blue pasta by mixing in blue corn meal with the flour, an idea which was extremely unsuccessful: either there was too little cornmeal to get a decent color or there was too little flour to get enough gluten to properly stretch the dough. In fact, it's much easier to color your pasta by mixing in a paste than it is by mixing in different dry ingredients (the almond flour pasta didn't work either). So I suppose if I really wanted some blue pasta in the future, I'd try using crushed violet or lavender petals (a lot of them!). It would be an interesting flavor, I bet.
So how about the other pasta? We ended up serving them with various pestos, to good effect. The different pastas have very subtle flavors which might be better appreciated if the pasta were cooked in an appropriate (copious) amount of fat, a good excuse to toss it in some good butter and parmesan, or to simmer it in cream. Which would be a pretty good remedy to this icy weather, actually.
Pasta Dough
1 1/2 c unbleached bread flour or all-purpose flour
3 eggs
Form a well with the flour and crack the eggs into it. With a fork, beat the eggs and slowly incorporate the flour. When the dough gets sticky and it's hard to work the fork, start kneading by hand. Dust the work surface with more flour if the dough gets really sticky, but the stickiness will subside as you continue kneading. When the dough is smooth and elastic, it's time to go to the pasta roller. Alternatively, the dough can be made in a food processor or mixer. It can also be rolled out by hand (hard) into a thin sheet, folded over, and cut into even strands, though I wouldn't try this for anything thinner than a papperdelle.
If you want colored pasta, mix in a few tablespoons of pureed roasted carrots, roasted beets, dried tomatoes, black olives (or squid ink? if someone's tried this, let me know!), spinach (blanched and moisture squeezed out), or orange peel, added as you knead the dough.
1 1/2 c unbleached bread flour or all-purpose flour
3 eggs
Form a well with the flour and crack the eggs into it. With a fork, beat the eggs and slowly incorporate the flour. When the dough gets sticky and it's hard to work the fork, start kneading by hand. Dust the work surface with more flour if the dough gets really sticky, but the stickiness will subside as you continue kneading. When the dough is smooth and elastic, it's time to go to the pasta roller. Alternatively, the dough can be made in a food processor or mixer. It can also be rolled out by hand (hard) into a thin sheet, folded over, and cut into even strands, though I wouldn't try this for anything thinner than a papperdelle.
If you want colored pasta, mix in a few tablespoons of pureed roasted carrots, roasted beets, dried tomatoes, black olives (or squid ink? if someone's tried this, let me know!), spinach (blanched and moisture squeezed out), or orange peel, added as you knead the dough.
