Pasta 101 November 27, 2007

If you’re as much of a pasta fiend as I am (and I know you are) then you’ve probably discovered the merits of fresh pasta over the dried stuff we can buy in cello bags at any grocer’s. Not that there’s anything wrong with the dried stuff; it’s easy, convenient and generally pretty tasty stuff…but it just doesn’t compare to the fresh stuff. Making pasta isn’t difficult but I won’t lie; it is time-consuming. I wish I was as quick with the stuff as Zia Louisa who thought nothing of whipping up a batch for unexpected guests…but I’m not, so it becomes a bit of a project…but oh-so-worthwhile.

What you need for four good-sized servings:

1 cup all purpose flour

2/3 cup fine durum semolina (we’ve talked about this stuff before)

2 eggs

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp salt

2-3 tbsp. warm water

Take all of the dry ingredients and blend them in a large bowl.

Once blended the dry stuff needs to have a well made in the centre. I failed at getting a good pic of that but it’s basically like making a bowl within the bowl. Into that inner bowl the wet ingredients are put. Like so:

At this point the inner bowl is folder over onto the wet ingredients.

I’m a big fan of the wooden spoon for that part. It can be done with the hands, but hands aren’t quite as good at getting underneath everything and pulling the stuff from the bottom up to the top. Once the wet ingredients are completely covered in the dry it’s time to stir…and stir and stir and stir until the contents of the bowl look like this:

Now it’s time to get the hands in there. And it’s important to use hands now because they will be the gauge for how moist the dough is. If it’s not sticking together then we’ll want to add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until it does. If it’s too sticky then we’ll want to add more flour, one tablespoon at a time. The result should be a wee bit sticky, leaving a thin film on the hand but firm too. When worked into a ball it should look a little like this:

Once it’s there, remove the ball from the bowl and work it into a rough log, then cut the log into 1 inch thick rounds.

Now the pasta is ready for rolling. I have a handy dandy pasta roller and cutter. It’s a dream.

And it’s pretty dirty so I shall sacrifice one of those 1 inch rounds of dough to help get it clean. In pressing the dough and pulling it along the rollers and the cutters all of the grub gets pulled out without compromising the integrity of the machine. Washing it is pretty much out of the question as it may rust those moving bits which do all the dirty work. I always save the end pieces of my dough logs for this job; one for the beginning of the process and one to give it a go over at the end.

Once satisfied with the cleanliness of one’s machine, the pressing of the real stuff may begin. Before beginning that, it’s important to flour the surface the pasta will be spending time on in between pressings. Most pasta machines start with the thickest pressing at number 1 (as does mine) but whatever the number, we want the first pressing to be at the thickest the rollers will allow then get thinner incrementally with each pressing.

Here’s the dough after the first press:

The end product should determine how thin the dough gets pressed but it’s important to get it thinner incrementally or the dough will tear. I usually cheat and go from 1 to 3 then up to 6 then 7 for things like ravioli or 9 (which is the thinnest setting on my machine) for things like spaghettini.

It’s best to move onto the cutting stage just before you’re ready to cook the pasta as this stuff doesn’t really store well (unless you’ve got a proper drying rack…which still doesn’t work for things like ravioli.) I swear by the biggest pot in the house for cooking pasta…doesn’t matter how much I’m cooking. The more space the noodles have to roll around in the boiling water the less chance they have of sticking together or requiring oil (we’ve talked about that before too) after they’re cooked. So I fill that big pot to within 2 inches of the top add a little salt and no pasta whatsoever until it’s at a rolling boil. But we’ll talk a bit more about that tomorrow.

Fast & Dirty Vegie Lasagne November 22, 2007

It really is fast -I’ve been known to put this together in under 10 minutes upon realising kids needed to be at scouts, soccer, whatever within the hour…but hopefully it’s dirty only in the figurative sense.

What you need:

1 box oven-ready lasagne noodles

2 cans of diced tomatoes

3/4 cup of pesto (or about 4 cubes)

1 tub of cottage cheese

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1 egg

An assortment of fresh vegetables from your fridge. In batch I used 1 large red pepper, 1 large yellow pepper, 1 medium zucchinis, half a pound of asparagus, 4 portablello mushrooms all sliced.

First step is to drain the tomatoes in a colander.

Transfer that to a bowl and add the pesto.

I know, it looks gross…it’s not going to look pretty any time soon, but it will taste fantastic. IN another bowl mix the egg and the cottage cheese together. The egg will help to bind the egg and keep your lasagne from being too runny.

Then it’s time to start layering in the pan. I start with a good, thick layer of the tomato/pesto mixture.

Yup. Still gross.

On top of that I add one of the vegetables, starting with the peppers this time.

Over that we put a single layer of the oven-ready noodles.

It doesn’t even need to be even. That’s a 10×14″ pan. Over that we add some of the cottage cheese mixture, another vegie (asparagus this time…in case you can’t tell), then more noodles.

And so on…

And so forth, alternating sauce, vegies, noodles until we’re out of all of the above.

Oven-ready noodles don’t hold up too well to being the directly-under-the-mozza layer so I always finish off with a vegetable (or fungus, as it were). On top of that I sprinkly my mounds of mozzarella and then toss the lot into the oven for 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

And end up with a nice, non-runny, not-as-gross-looking vegetable lasagne.

Mama loves her manhattans November 20, 2007

I’ve started this post a few times and each one seemed to become more long-winded than the one prior. Lesson learned is that it’s difficult to write about something so close to one’s heart, something a girl could feel so passionate about. So I’ll keep this v. 18.5 of my manhattan recipe short and sweet.

Without further ado, let me introduce to my three good friends; Martini Rosse, Danfield’s Private Reserve Rye Whiskey and Angostura’s (brilliant) Bitters.

They are the special ingredients in this favourite cocktail o’ mine. Next, meet Mr. Jigger:

I love my jigger almost as much as I love my manhattans. His two parts complete the whole. They’re essential to the overall balance.

Okay…here’s the recipe:

2 ice cubes

1.5 ounces Danfield’s

1 ounce Martini Rosso

6 shakes from the little bottle o’ bitters

Served in my favourite manhattan glass; a repurposed bottle of Maria’s mole sauce. Dunno what it is but there’s something about getting a noseful of manhattany vapours before reaching in to taste it which makes this glass perfect.

broiled pesto shrimp November 14, 2007

Time for the every-other-wednesday-with-the-eldest-sprog-shrimp-eating institution. This one is easy. Easier than pie…but I don’t cook pie…easier than…well, it’s just really easy and will have all of your heartthrobs pounding down your door if you feed it to them.

What you need:

1 kilo uncooked, deveined shrimp

1/2 stick of butter

1/2 cup of pesto (we used cilantro pesto tonight and our measurements weren’t very specific)

1/3 cup of cooking sherry

First step is to thaw (if necessary) and peel the shrimp. Being in Ontario it’s difficult to purchase fresh, unfrozen shrimp unless you’re willing to sign over your first born for them (which, sometimes, I am) so I always, always buy frozen, uncooked shrimp with the shells still on as the shells help to seal in the oceany flavour and keep them from freezer burn and other nasty things. They thaw quickly when given a cold water bath over an hour with about three water changes in between.

Those are our crustacean friends in their bath. Sometimes (like tonight) I cheat and add a little warm water to the bath and change the water more frequently to reduce the bath time by about 30 minutes. You can tell by the bubblies in the water that warm water was added. I’m not sure what causes that but it only ever happens with warm water. I suggest using the cold water only bath, but this will do in a pinch. The trick is to use water a little warmer than body temperature, but not too warm or you’ll prematurely start the cooking process and be on your way toward fish-flavoured bubble gum. Ew. Enough about that.

Step two is the saucy bit. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Toss your shrimps in a single layer into a large casserole dish. Sliver your half stick of butter over them as evenly as possible. They may not all be covered and that’s okay. We’re going for tasty, not coronary. The butter will go as far as it needs to. Over that drizzle your third of a cup of cooking sherry then dap bits of pesto over all of that so far. It should look a bit like this:

Which actually looks kind of gross…but will be tasty. Honest.

As soon you’re done that step, or the oven is preheated (whichever comes last) turn the cooker dial to broil. This will cook your shrimp more evenly, and they’re going to cook quickly, so that’s important. After two minutes of broiler heat-up time, toss your little ocean fruits into the oven. You’ll need to keep an eye on them because as soon as they start (and just start – this should happen about 4 minutes after putting them in the oven) to turn pink we’ll need to give them a stir so the pestoey-sherry-buttery goodnesses all mix together.

This is too pink:

Yes, I got distracted by the telephone and wasn’t paying enough attention. But all was not lost! After the first stirring phase I simply lifted the oven rack two notches so that our saucy little shrimps received more direct heat for a shorter period of time, thus reducing the sauce more quickly and giving that slightly browned finish I like so much.

So, if you didn’t screw up (like me) then about 4 minutes after that stir they should be ready to come out of the oven. They should look like they do in the last pic at that point. If you do screw up (like me) then you’ll need to give them about 2 minutes more under the broiler.

Then it’s time to serve and there are many options when it comes to serving these. My favourites are over rice with steamed vegies or in bowls with baguette croutons and a crispy salad.

It’s Tuesday and he’s cooking November 6, 2007

The boy outdid himself tonight with a lovely spinach salad, mashed chivey-parsley-red potatoes & broiled pork with salsa verde.

Fall vegie stew November 6, 2007

Today we’re making a lovely, spicey, crap-weather-beating stew out of the beauties above.

What you need:

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

4 cloves garlic, smashed (not crushed)

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1 of each, peeled and cubed: large yam, medium pepper or butternut squash (or the squash of your choice, really,) medium turnip

3 large parsnips, peeled and cut into circles

6 medium sized red potatoes, cubed – I don’t peel these

2 teaspoons each: whole mustard, cumin, coriander, allspice & fennel seeds (I prefer to use the whole, unground versions of these spices as I find their flavours stay stronger over longer periods of time than their ground versions)

2 teaspoons each: ground turmeric, cinnamon (yes! cinnamon! it will be wonderful, never fear!), nutmeg, cayenne pepper (because these things are hard to find whole and harder to grind if you do)

2 mushroom bouillon cubes

1 herbes fines bouillon cube (okay, I’m only using this because I want to try it – you can substitute that for a tablespoon each of thyme, oregano, sage and fresh parsley)

3 tbsp olive oil

How to do it:

Cube/slice/smash/chop all of the vegetabley ingredients listed above. If you’re anything like me your table will look a little like the following picture when you’re done:

Then toss the whole mustard, cumin, coriander, allspice & fennel seeds into a mortar & pestle or a spice grinder (aka: coffee grinder – some people in rich countries keep several of these for various reasons, however my Queendom is not so auspicious – okay, okay. We did trade the second coffee grinder for a set of stella artois glasses.)

With that we’ll grind them into a coarse (as opposed to fine) powder. To that we’ll add the rest of the spices (but not the herbs!) Then we toss that into a large pot over medium-high heat:

And we’re going to leave them there, stirring occasionally, until out little spicey friends become over-poweringly fragrant and start to pop. Again, you’ll have to take my word on this, but they will pop. At which point we’ll add 3 tablespoons of olive oil and stir until everything’s coated. To that we’ll add the thinly sliced red onion and smashed cloves of garlic and stir a bunch more until the onions are translucent. At this point we add our potatoes and only our potatoes so help us Ford. Oh, and a little salt. Like, a teaspoonful. And we stir again.

What’s going on at this point is our salt and butter and potatoes are all mixing together and convincing the potatoes to release some of their starches which will serve to thicken the sauce later. It’s important to not allow the potatoes to brown too much for this very reason, but if they brown a bit that’s ok too.

Then we add all of the other splendid autumnal vegies….and yes; we stir again. We want to get them all coated with those spices we worked so hard to put together.

We’ll let them sit there like that, still over medium-high heat, still stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Then we’ll add just enough water to cover our vegies.

At this point we’re going to turn the heat down to medium-low, put a lid on it and leave it to its own devices. I’m going to go get the kids from the bus stop (but not before waiting until there’s a little movement in the pot then turning it down to the lowest heat possible on the burner because I’m paranoid of fires.)

Your finished stew should be thick, but still have tender but identifiable chunks of vegetables in it.

Because vegetable stews are a wee bit more delicate than meat-based stews, I tend to not make dumplings with them and opt for buttermilk tea biscuits instead.

Picnic in the Park November 2, 2007

I’m all about inflicting cruel and unusual punishments upon my loin fruits and my nephews. So today, November the 2nd, first morning with frost on the ground, we went for a picnic in the park. We ran our errands and then hit the grocery store and picked up a small rotisserie chicken, a bag of baby carrots, some clementines and drinking boxes, hit the park and mowed down…but not before climbing a tree.

calzoni November 1, 2007

mmmMMMmmm…trouser legs. Can one ever really get enough? ‘Trouser legs’ is apparently what the word calzone translates as but I don’t really get the reference. In spite of the nomenclature, I’m all about these yummy pockets into which one can empty the contents of one’s refrigerator in one fell swoop.

What you need for the dough:

1 package (or 2 and 1 quarter teaspoons) dry active yeast

1tbsp honey

1 cup hot (but not boiling) water

1 1/2 cups all purpose or whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups durum semolina

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

Calzone dough goes together in much the same way focaccia dough does, but instead of a rough, sticky dough this time we’re going for a soft, silky, uniform dough and the way we go about achieving that is through kneading and waiting…and kneading and waiting some more. Needless to say, this doesn’t realistically go together for a week-night-after-work-meal but it’s a lot of fun to put together on a day off when you’ve got the burning desire to clean your fridge.

First step in putting the dough together is to dissolve your honey and yeast in your water by tossing them all in a large bowl (as this will be the same one used to mix the rest of the ingredients) and stirring a bit. Let that sit ten minutes then add 1 cup of the flour, all of the semolina, the oil and the salt. Mix those together well, adding flour all the while, until you’ve got a nice ball-esque bit of dough. Flour a kneading surface and knead for about ten minutes until the ball is firm and smooth and uniform and silky and doesn’t stick to your fingers anymore. Place the ball back in the bowl, cover with a tea towel and put it in your unheated oven or microwave (because these are really the best kitchen spots to let dough rise without interruption) for about an hour and a half or until it looks like this:

At which point you’ll want to punch it down, knead it for another 5 minutes and let is sleep for half an hour again.

This is a good time to start putting your guts together. Deciding what to stuff your calzone with is half the fun. As I said before, it’s a good thing to make to clear your fridge of vegies, meats, cheeses that are on their way out and need to be used up. The beauty is that once the calzoni are cooked, you can toss ‘em in the freezer for later. They’re great things to pack for a brown bag lunch as they can be heated in the nuker pretty quickly and, depending on their stuffings, are pretty much a complete meal on their own.

For this batch we made two separate fillings; tomato/parsley/feta & spinach/mushroom/provolone. To those ingredients we added salt, pepper, nutmeg, oregano and wee bit of olive oil and tossed the lot of them until they looked like salads:

Now you’re ready to start stuffing your calzoni. First step is to divide the dough into 8 even(ish) balls. Then you roll (using a rolling pin) each ball out into a quarter inch thick circle. This is an imprecise art, folks. Don’t feel like your balls should be uniform in thickness or perfectly round – the dough is forgiving and I don’t know about you but I’m a complete failure at making anything even, but if you’re really OCD then I would suggest using an extra large coffee tin to cut your circles from your rolled out dough.

After rolling out each ball stuff it with about 1/2-3/4 of a cup of the filling of your choice. Be careful not to overstuff ‘em. The dough is quite elastic and forgiving but will only handle so much stretching before it tears. Smear a little water along the edges and fold into half-moon shapes. Press the edges with a fork, et voila! You’ve got yummy little pockets just itching to get into the oven. Oh, and probably a very messy table.

You may want to clean that up before you actually begin the rolling and stuffing process. However, if you’re anything like me you’ll just work in the cracks between things.

Like pizza, your calzoni should bake at a relatively high temperature for a relatively (yes, I like my qualifiers) short period of time. Because we haven’t used any ingredients which actually need to cook inside our little pockets (raw meats, for example, which I really don’t suggest; cooked meats are a-ok, though) we can get away with that, but they do need to be cooked slightly differently than a pizza because the heat needs to get all the way through the guts and melt all of the delicious cheeses we used. I usually cook them at 425 degrees (preheat the oven) for about 15 minutes for the first go. I then the calzoni I want to freeze and put them on cooling racks, brush the ones I want to eat straight away with a little egg and pop those ones back in the oven until they’re a nice golden brown.

Here’s what they look like after 15 minutes:

If they don’t look that cooked then keep them in the oven for another couple of minutes or until they do.

And here’s what they look like after the egg brushing and another 10 minutes in the cooker:

mmmMMMmmm…scrumptious.

Freezing instructional gubbins: I often double the ingredients listed above to reserve some calzoni for a later date. They’re perfect for tossing into lunches as they’ll thaw out in the hours before lunch time and can be reheated in a nukrowave in about three minutes on medium-high. To freeze them I simply flash freeze by popping them into the freezer, still on their cooling racks, once they’ve cooled to room temperature. I leave them in there like that for a couple of hours then package them in freezer bags and return them to their icy new home.