Double whammy

Still trying to perfect my techniques, I whipped up a fairly labor-intensive dinner last night of homemade pasta AND more macarons. Glutton for punishment? Nah. I’m feeling more and more comfortable with both endeavors and won’t rest until I’ve nailed them.

First up, more macarons. Chocolate, to be exact. A pretty easy adaptation; you merely add a little cocoa powder to the powdered sugar and almonds. Trying to streamline, I decided to experiment by cutting a few corners to see if they’d make a difference. First of all, I decided not to sweat the sifting. I just stirred the almonds, powdered sugar and cocoa together as thoroughly as I could and hoped for the best. Next, I used a Baggie for my piping as opposed to my pastry bag (which is a bitch to clean after use). When I was done, I just popped the Baggie in the trash can and that was that. Two big time-savers right off the bat!

Recipes I’ve consulted offer varying opinions about how long to bake macarons and at what temperature. My last lemon batch was tasty, but almost a little too chewy, so I left my chocolate macarons in the oven a little longer than I have my prior two attempts. Around 16-17 minutes instead of the usual 12-13. In the meantime, I simply melted chocolate chips with Half and Half in the microwave and stirred in a tiny bit of butter to make a quick ganache filling.

Final results? The cookies looked great. They smelled great. They tasted great, EXCEPT, they were overbaked. Way too crunchy without a hint of their trademark chewiness. Hmph. Apparently 16-17 minutes is too long – live and learn. If it wasn’t for that minor flaw, this might have been my best batch yet! The other shortcuts I took didn’t seem to affect the outcome at all. Good to know. One more time, and I think I’ll have it sorted.

overbaked chocolate macarons

For our entree, I pulled out the new pasta machine again and rolled out a couple mounds of dough. It still boggles my mind that all you have to do is knead a few eggs into some flour and bam – noodles. I rolled through the dough into long, fragile sheets and laid them out to dry while hubby helped me concoct a quick bolognese sauce with Italian sausage (the Marsh butcher counter is the best place in town for bulk Italian sausage, IMHO). I’m more a sweet sausage fan, but hubby likes it spicy, so we blended a pound of each. The results – delicious, with a nice but not overpowering kick of heat.

We boiled the pasta briefly to soften. In retrospect, it might have been smart to cut the pasta to size before boiling it – the pasta expanded as it cooked, and we had a hell of time trying to fish the sheets out of the scalding water without ripping them and/or hard-boiling our fingers in the process.

Finally, I got the lasagna assembled and threw it in the oven for about 30 minutes. Our lovely neighbors agreed to join us as taste testers. At long last, the oven buzzer rang and I delivered the steaming dish of bubbly cheesy goodness to the table, along with a bowl of quick-boiled green beans and slices of the French bread our neighbors had contributed.

homemade lasagna with fresh noodles

The lasagna was, well, it was fantastic. The fresh noodles are labor intensive to create, but they make such a HUGE difference – the texture was light and simply melted in my mouth, not a trace of the chewiness that I hate. And the sauce was awesome. I have to admit, hubby made a great call with adding in a bit of the hot sausage for punch. It was excellent. (AND he washed the entire mountain of dishes my efforts produced. Bless him. He’s a keeper.) Even the toddler scarfed down some of the leftover noodle “rags” with a little bit of sauce and some cheese on top.

All in all, a great meal shared with great friends. What more could a person want?

Presto – pasta!

I’m convinced I must have been Italian in a previous life. I fell immediately in love with Rome during a whirlwind high school tour eons ago; one of my fondest memories of that trip was celebrating my 16^th birthday in the Eternal City. I was so enamored with Italy, I proceeded to take two years of Italian in college. It wasn’t until last year that I finally got to return to this beautiful country, tagging along with hubby on a business trip through Milan and a little slice of the countryside around Parma and Bologna. We’ve since been back to Milan twice more within the past eight months for quick stays, but I haven’t yet revisited Rome, Florence and Tuscany; or made it to Venice for the first time.

Italian food is probably my favorite cuisine to cook. Pasta, tomatoes, fresh herbs, roasted meats, cheeses, breads, wines — what’s not to like? When you start out with ingredients this fabulous, you really can’t go wrong. Plus, the preparations are usually fairly simple, often requiring little more than a drizzle of olive oil and a few grinds of salt and pepper.

Hubby gave me a pasta machine for Christmas. As in, one of those stainless steel thingys legit chefs use to roll out pasta dough to paper-thin thicknesses. This is the kind of contraption I often find intriguing, but would never in a million years think to buy for myself. Like the waffle iron my brother gave me two years ago, which I’m ashamed to say only saw use for the first time back in October.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to be more fearless when it comes to cooking and stretch my culinary boundaries. No time like the present to dive right in.

A chef acquaintance recently sent me an email that said making your own pasta at home is one of the easiest things in the world to do. I didn’t quite believe him. I can recall making homemade noodles from scratch on precisely one occasion, and they weren’t great. My last attempt at gnocchi was pretty good, but wow, what a lot of work.

The pasta machine looked a little intimidating when I opened it up, consisting of several heavy parts that linked together and a c-clamp to attach the whole thing onto the edge of a counter or table. All the pieces arrived slickly oiled, and the directions for cleaning warned against washing with water, instead instructing to dust the whole apparatus with flour and then feed dough through every orifice to de-oil.

At hubby’s suggestion, YouTube came to my rescue. A quick “how to make pasta” search uncovered a very helpful tutorial that bolstered my confidence. Mentally telling myself that Italian grandmas and Top Chefs do this all the time without batting an eye, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

I say this in all sincerity — making pasta at home is not that hard. It’s true. It just takes a little time and some elbow grease. Flour, eggs and salt are the only ingredients you need. No joke. It literally costs pennies per serving.

The first thing you do is dump a good amount of flour onto your (it goes without saying, VERY clean) surface. Mound it up into a pile and create a well in the middle, into which you crack a couple of eggs. Sprinkle on enough salt to lightly cover each yolk. Then, very carefully so as not to collapse the walls of your flour fortress, you blend the eggs with a fork, slowly incorporating flour all the while until it becomes an oozy, sticky blob.

Once the dough is fairly together, you can start kneading it, adding more flour until it becomes smooth and dense. This part takes some muscle, I was surprised to find. You keep folding the dough in half and pressing it out again and again. It takes about five minutes until the texture becomes smooth and pliable, then you form the whole thing into a ball and let it rest for about 10 minutes.

I felt like a mechanic getting the machine c-clamped onto the counter and cranking a test batch of dough through all the openings. If there’s an adult equivalent of playing with Play-Doh, this must be it. Hubby even got into the picture. Maybe I’m easily amused, but it was so much fun to see the delicate sheets of pasta becoming impossibly thinner and thinner, finally emerging from the cutter as threads of spaghetti and thick linguine. When all was said and done, the entire kitchen was coated with a fine dusting of flour, but we had two cookie sheets full of pasta drying for dinner.

The pasta looked gorgeous, but I was secretly terrified it would turn into a gloopy, floury mess once I dropped it in to cook. I whipped together the simplest of tomato sauces as I waited for my pot of water to boil. Holding my breath, I eased in the first batch of noodles. It held together and after a few seconds, floated to the top of the water, looking like actual fettuccine!

I boiled the pasta for about four minutes as per the instruction booklet, then cautiously fished out one of the noodles and slurped it into my mouth. Joy of joys – it was fantastic!!!

from-scratch fettuccine

I quickly drained the fettuccine and tried my hand at the angel hair. It only took about two minutes to cook, and was terrific as well! Mamma mia, what a revelation. Hubby complained only once to say that the kitchen smelled like boiled eggs when I started cooking the pasta, but he shut right up after I stuffed a noodle in his mouth.

The texture of the homemade pasta was perfect, so unbelievably tender and worlds better than store-bought dried brands. With a light coating of the tomato sauce and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, it was a delicious meal, if I do say so myself. I couldn’t have been prouder. Even my picky-eater son and stepson scarfed down their entire servings.

pasta perfetto!

I can’t wait to experiment with different shapes and creative add-ins for the dough. Next up, cannelloni. Or perhaps ravioli. Maybe a fettuccine alfredo. The possibilities are endless… buon appetito!