How to Make Pasta

This is an excellent kitchen basic to have in your repertoire... and an easy way to impress pretty much anyone.

Being able to make a basic pasta from scratch will serve you well in life.

Basic Egg Pasta, Hand-Made by You

Make a well in the flour for your eggs, salt and oil.

I've written the recipe on a per-egg basis because that's how I remember it. Also, it's easy to make as much or as little as you want.  As a point of reference, 3 eggs yield about 1 lb of fresh pasta (4 large or 6 small-ish servings).


for each egg:
100 g flour*
pinch of salt
1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Beat the wet ingredients together lightly.

*Use italian 00 flour if you have it but don't feel like you need it.  I normally use a mix of about half all-purpose and half durum semolina.  You can also use a mix of all-purpose with whole wheat or spelt flour.  Or just all-purpose.

Gradually work the flour into the egg mixture, scraping your
work surface as necessary.

Pile the flour up on your work surface** and make a well in the center of it. Fill the well with your eggs, salt and oil.  Using a fork, beat the egg mixture lightly, then begin to to gradually incorporate the flour into the egg mixture until it's too thick for stirring.  Work the remaining flour in with your hands.

**I use a large plastic serving tray, which is easier to clean than the counter and helps reduce the amount of flour which ends up on the floor, which is subsequently vacuumed up by Miss Bella the english springer hoover dog, which then results in great snorting and sneezing.  Somehow the discomfort of snorting and sneezing has never dissuaded her from spending the entire time I'm making pasta squished between my shins and the lower cupboard just in case some flour manages to fall.

When you get to this stage, your fork is no longer any good to
you.  Start kneading to finish incorporating the flours.

Knead the dough until smooth.  This will take about 9 minutes.  In the first couple of minutes, the dough will become evenly combined, then it will seize up.  You haven't done it wrong: knead through the stiffness, I promise it will relax and become pliable.

Cover the dough and let it rest for at least 25 minutes. This is a good time to make some sauce.

The dough is ready when you have kneaded the flours in,
kneaded until it seized, kneaded through the stiffness, and
ended up with a smooth, soft dough.  Let it rest before rolling.

If you are using a pasta roller, divide the dough into pieces about the size of an extra large egg.  Flatten and dust with flour to prevent sticking in the roller.  Run the dough through on the largest setting, fold over and run through again (dusting exterior with flour as needed) until it comes through smoothly.  Run through the same setting once more. Reduce roller setting by two sizes and run the dough through twice, dusting with flour if needed. 

Divide the dough into sections for rolling.

Continue to reduce roller size by two until desired thickness.  When rolling is completed, dust the pasta sheet generously with flour and set aside, covering if necessary to prevent drying out. Repeat with each section.

(If you are rolling by hand, divide the dough into manageable sized pieces for the size of your work surface and roll to desired thickness.)

Keep the dough well-floured to prevent sticking.

If the cutter that came from your pasta maker isn't broken because none of your cats knocked it onto the floor, use it to cut the desired width. 

If you don't have a working cutter, roll the well-floured sheets of pasta up and cut the desired width with a sharp knife.

~~~

This pasta freezes well, so you can make a large batch and freeze what you don't need.  Make sure it's well-floured to keep it from sticking together, but cook it directly from frozen (don't thaw) to avoid having damp flour glue the nicely separated pasta together.

When you are ready to cook, add pasta to a large pot of vigorously boiling water, stirring as you add to help keep things separated.  Fresh pasta will be cooked in 1-3 minutes (test as you go, it's done when it is firm and tastes fully cooked), depending on how thick and how wide it's cut.  From frozen it will take 2-4 minutes.

Roll the pasta sheets up into coils and use a very sharp knife to cut to desired width.  You can use this recipe for stuffed pasta and lasagna too, but follow recipe directions for cutting.

~~~

I do not have an Italian grandmother who taught me to make pasta, but I do have all the Italian grandmothers of the miracle of the internet.  Plus a few years of trial and error.  This recipe is a result of that, and for me, delivers the most consistently good results and disappointingly few dinner party leftovers.

Pasta making is a good skill to have.  No matter how good the pasta you buy in the store is, it's never as satisfying and never as impressive as the pasta you make by hand.  The pasta roller spends about as much time on the counter as the tortilla press, and it would be very difficult to decide between them which would be my desert island pick.***


***Okay, you are correct, the obvious answer is to take a rolling pin, but that's not much fun as a thought experiment, is it?

Freezer and Pantry Valentine: Part 3. The Pudding

Make an impressive three course meal for two on Valentine's Day using ingredients you already have. For the pudding, make hot and gooey apple-chocolate bread pudding. (I told you it was impressive.)

Opposites attract, so avoid arguing over fruit or chocolate and have both.  After all, it IS Valentine's.

Apple-Chocolate Bread Pudding for Two

a hunk of stale bread (french stick is good but anything will do), cut into chunks 
1 apple, peeled and chopped (or maybe some frozen berries, or perhaps a handful of raisins or other dried fruit) 
1 egg (non negotiable, sorry vegans)
1/2 cup milk (or cream, or mmmmm maybe chocolate milk.....) 
3 tbsp sugar, I used white, but use what you have, or honey or maple syrup.....
knob of butter, cut into small pieces
a handful of chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate or, I don't know, mini marshmallows...)

MAKE AHEAD: You probably don't want to be running around like a crazy person feeling harassed and frustrated on Valentine's Day.  So get this ready before you pop your main in the oven, you could assemble it hours ahead, more time for the egginess to soak into the breadiness. Pop it the oven as soon as the quail comes out and impress your love with a heartwarming dessert.

Chances are good you've got all the ingredients already.  The
uneaten end of a loaf of bread, that apple which inexplicably
no one is eating, chocolate chips lost way in the back of the
freezer... eggs, milk butter, sugar.  Okay, maybe you don't
have the exact items, but you've got something that will work.

Your oven will be nicely preheated to 350F from cooking your quail.

Butter two individual ramekins.

Stuff the ramekins full with bread mixed with the apple, and chocolate - save a wee bit of the chocolate to sprinkle on the top.  Really jam it those ramekins.

Whisk together your egg, milk and sugar.  Slowly pour the egg mixture over the bread giving it time to soak in, you may want to encourage this by pressing the bread down a bit.  

Top with a few teensy bits of butter and reserved chocolate.

Place the ramekins on a shallow pan and bake uncovered for 30 minutes, or until the custard is set and the top is golden brown.  Let cool a few minutes before serving, to avoid comically blowing on each other through the first half of the dessert course.

~~~

'bou likes fruity desserts and I don't believe something counts as dessert unless it contains chocolate, whipped cream or meringue.  With this pudding, I look like I'm being considerate of caribougrrl while giving myself a little chocolate valentine.

caribougrrl is always complaining (under the guise of teasing) about the British obsession with making dessert out of stale bread, but I think she's starting to get used to them.  And for godsakes, I put an APPLE in it.  

But don't kid yourself, the next time she's away I'm going to make this with chocolate milk and mini marshmallows.  Just don't tell her...

The Moose Curry Experience Best of 2014

We like to think we learn a few new tricks every year.  We certainly make an effort to.

Thanks to a good friend sending us bitters (some homemade!), we are beginning to really understand cocktails.  The Old Fashioned, however, wins the year.  

The Best 2014 Food Discoveries chez The Moose Curry Experience

As chronic gifted under-achievers, we're nearly late in getting our "best of 2014" list together, but here it is.  Our favourite new finds, new techniques and new solutions from the last year, in no particular order.

The Old-Fashioned

Curious about a note on Facebook, I asked an old friend, “Tell me about the bitters?!” to which he replied, “Check your mailbox in a few days.”  Much to our excitement (and sudden anxiety), a package containing homemade rhubarb bitters, homemade celery bitters, and some small-batch artisan-y orange bitters arrived at the post office.  Determined to do these justice, we bought better liquor than we might otherwise and did a lot of experimentation.  It feels like we are beginning to understand cocktails.  Which is as good a gift as the bitters themselves.

The complete winner though, is the Old-Fashioned...  made sacrilegiously with good floral single-malt scotch.  It was a complete and utter delight to discover that whisky can be as good in a cocktail as it is on its own.  Maybe even better in a cocktail.  Fefe likes the Old Fashioned because it can come with a maraschino cherry.  I like it because it smells like storm petrels.

Pho

Good lord, you can make pho at home!

It's what's pho dinner.  It's what's pho lunch.  It's even what's pho breakfast.  I can't think of the last time we had any leftover roast (other than fennel-rubbed pork, see below) where the carcass wasn't used for pho broth... plus all the pho broth Fefe has made from meat bought specifically for that purpose.

We had to go to Corner Brook in the late winter, not a place we would normally be thrilled to drive to in late winter, but we were looking forward to it because a Vietnamese restaurant had opened there a few months earlier.  I was dreaming of pho as the date approached.  Unfortunately, as the date approached, the restaurant was temporarily closed down and it didn't reopen until we were safely back across the island.  So disappointing.  But I couldn't stop thinking about pho.  Finally, while I was fighting a really nasty summer flu and could only breathe with difficulty out of one nostril, Fefe Noir took pity on me.  All I wanted was a bowl of chicken noodle soup, but specifically chicken pho so I could taste it.  She scoured the miracle of the internet pho recipes and it turned out to be a lot less mysterious and difficult than we expected.  So much so, it's part of our phoking repertoire now.

Za’atar

I want to ask, “How is it we’ve never used za’atar before?”, but I know the answer.  It may have existed for centuries in the middle east, but it did not exist in Newfoundland in any easily obtainable way until 2014.  Even if we’d known what we were missing before now, we couldn't have made it ourselves since sumac is impossible to find here*.

We’re in love though.  Za’atar on pita, za’atar on yogurt, za’atar on cottage cheese, in soups, in salad dressing, on eggs, dips, cooked veg, raw veg, meats of all sorts… it’s endlessly charming.

*I have a sneaking suspicion that some smug Newfoundland resident is going to tell me about some really obvious place that’s always carried za’atar and sumac.  Bring it on.  I’d like another source because the last time I bought some it was marked down to half-price, often a sign that it will disappear from the shelves forever.  I’d rather spend money right here than give it to someone somewhere else to have it mailed to me.

Grates Cove Studio Cafe

If you drive northwest-ish (as best you can following the road) from our home for long enough, all the way to the end of the road, you will arrive at the end of the earth, in a town called Grates Cove.   A place where you might find a cow tethered in someone's front yard, where there are days you can count more humpbacked whales in the coastal waters than people you will lay your eyes on.  

But as you are coming into the town, this astounding thing happens: the Grates Cove Studios Cafe.  And this is not any old cafe, it's a cafe serving Louisiana classics like gumbo and etouffe. Literally at the end of the earth.  Did I say that already? Not just gumbo either, sushi, Korean bbq and stromboli.  In rural Newfoundland! By far our best restaurant discovery of the year.

BBQ Pizza

Shockingly easy, and it really works.  Pizza can be cooked, right from the raw dough stage, on your propane bbq.

Not pizza with bbq sauce, but pizza made right there on the bbq grill.  We know other people have been doing this for a long time.  I have a reasonably clear memory of reading about it more than a decade ago in a magazine… I have a less clear memory of which magazine (Food & Drink? Martha Stewart? Canadian Living?). 

At any rate, the new-to-us technique traveled to us with some of our summer guests… during their road trip they stayed with someone who made it for them, then they made it for us.  Then we made it pretty much every week until it got too cold outside for sane people to be standing out at the grill.  However, I’m reluctant to suggest we’ll never be out there in unseemly weather... if we get a repeat of #DarkNL this year, bbq pizza could make the outdoor winter cooking list**.

**Fefe is not convinced of our ability to get dough to rise if we can't heat the house.  I'm working on a plan that involves tea light candles and the tiny tent we gave the cats for Christmas...

6-Minute Egg

What can I say?  It's a bit embarrassing for food bloggers to admit they didn't even know how to a boil an egg until well past their early 30s (there has to be a joke in there somewhere), but the 6-minute egg was something of a revelation.  Still soft, but custard-sauce-thick rather than runny yet, hard enough to be peel-able.

Soft-ish boiled eggs were obviously sexy in 2014; poached-in-the-shell and 6-minute boiled eggs seemed to be everywhere.  Eventually, Fefe tried the technique to do eggs to go into a spinach pie... when they stayed custard-like even with a second cooking, we were hooked.  Now we look for excuses to top things with egg.

Bring a pot of water to a boil, plunge your eggs in, boil for 6 minutes, remove to cold running water until just cool enough to handle, peel and they are ready for use. 

Fennel with Pork

Fennel has always gone into our pork meatballs wrapped in lemon leaves, because that’s what the first recipe we used did and it was delicious.  Somehow, that failed to sink into our minds as an epic pairing until we were watching the Jamie Oliver cooks frugally series and he rubbed a pork roast with fennel.  Suddenly it was all dings and flashing lights and air horns in our minds: pork and fennel.  Of course!  Duh.  And holey shirts, what a lot of fennel we’ve been through since that moment.

As a matter of interest, you can make an outstanding bean soup with the bones and scraps of a fennel-crusted slow-cooked pork butt.

A Cast-Iron Griddle

The cast iron griddle pretty much lives on our stove nowadays.  

We can cook more than one tortilla at a time!  More than one pancake!  Enough peppers and garlic for a big pot of romesco sauce.  All the peppers and tomatillos for a batch of salsa.  Bacon and eggs AT THE SAME TIME.  Bacon and eggs and toutons, if you like.  Or just an army of toutons. Moose sausage for all our friends and relatives (if one of our friends or relatives would give us some moose sausage...).  

And, if you turn it over, there's a grill we haven't even started to use yet.

NOMA Cookbook

The NOMA cookbook entered our home in the summer of 2014.  It is a beautiful thing.  There's an almost perverse sincerity oozing from the pages.. the earnest dedication to a food politic/ ethic/ morality in the essays.  Seriously beautiful photographs.  Paper that you want to spend your afternoon stroking because of it's genuine paper-ness.   

I will spend the next few decades flipping through this book being inspired to think more and more about food origins and locality.  I will expand my foraging and gleaning habits and pay more attention to the wildness of wild food.

I will never cook from this book.  

The NOMA cookbook recipes are beyond my comprehension; it's like the experimental jazz of cookery.  It will prod and poke and challenge, but I will always be chasing the tune rather than catching it.  I love it.

Solving the Mystery of the Wooden Spoon Handles

Over the last couple of years, our wooden spoons have disappeared one by one.  The spoon part, anyway.  No matter how diligently we made sure they were far back on the counter, no matter how well rinsed we kept them, eventually every last wooden spoon was decapitated.  We had our suspicions but careful monitoring of the, um, culmination of the digestive process in all our pets left no clues.  

But no spoon-ends appeared either, no matter how many appliances were pulled from the wall and cleaned out from under.

Shortly before Christmas, during marshmallow-making season, the culprit was caught in the act.  We are still suspicious he had some feline help getting the spoon from the back of the counter to the edge.  We now have a better system for idle wooden spoons (mason jars are a bit like duct tape as a general problem solver...).

The wooden spoon thief in his natural habitat.

Leftover Lentils Breakfast Pizza

Part salad, part sandwich, part eggs and toast... hard to pin down, but entirely moreish.

(This is a Free Style entry into the Lentil Recipe Revelations Challenge: keep reading to find out how to help us win!)

Use up leftovers from the fridge to make this protein-packed breakfast pizza.  Makes a good breakfast, a great lunch, or a really fantastic post-workout snack.

Smoky Lentil & Egg Breakfast Pizza

1/2 c. canned green lentils*, rinsed and drained
1/2 med yellow or white onion*, minced
1 small fresh pepper, minced (hot or sweet, whichever you prefer at breakfast/brunch/post-workout-snack hour; we used jalapeno)
7 cm (~2.5 inches) section of chorizo , diced
1/3 c. crumbled feta or queso fresco (use queso fresco if you have it, it's difficult to come by here so we used feta)
2 lemon wedges**
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp smoked hot paprika
2 small naan bread or 2 greek pita
olive oil for drizzling
2 handfuls of leafy greens such as arugula, turnip green, spinach or kale
2 eggs

*a good way to use leftovers from the rice & lentil cakes with dal recipe
** might be leftover from your dinner party bar...

Preheat oven to 375F and line a baking tray with parchment paper or a silicone liner.

The cooked or canned lentils, the smoked paprika and the lemon wedges
are MUSTS.  Pretty much anything else can be swapped for something
else in your fridge or pantry.  I just can't put The Moose Curry Experience
guarantee behind it.

In a bowl, mix together lentils, onion, pepper, chorizo and cheese.  Squeeze lemon juice over the mixture, season with salt and smoked paprika, and toss to distribute. (If your chorizo is pre-cooked, you can stop here and have a lovely salad.)

Place naan or pita on baking sheet.  Drizzle bread with a reasonable but generous amount of olive oil, then USE YOUR CLEAN HANDS to spread the oil evenly over the bread.  Don't wash your hands yet.  Use your oil-covered hands to transfer the leafy greens from your prep board and spread them on the bread (this leaves some oil on the greens, but not too much).  Don't wash up yet... no need to waste the oil, rub what's left into your hands as a moisturizer!

Spoon half the lentil mixture onto each bread, leaving the center free of lentils.

Carefully crack an egg into the middle of each bread (your lentil mixture is acting like a wall to keep it in place... pretty clever, eh?). Sprinkle the egg with more smoked paprika to garnish.

Transfer to oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 350F.  Bake for 22 minutes (in our oven this does a thick but still runny egg... cook more or less depending how you like your eggs). 

Serve on a plate and eat at the table, or transfer to a cutting board and eat standing up at the counter.

22 minutes at 350F gives you a hot, thick and runny yolk, just the way you should like it.  If you don't like a runny yolk (ahem, caribougrrl...) leave it in for longer, or maybe just take advantage of uneven heat in your oven and eat the more-cooked one.

Makes 2 pizzas.  Serves 4 for snacks, 2 for brunch, or 1 really hungry person any time of day.

~~~

We left you with some strange leftover ingredients the night of your Reconstructed Dal and Rice dinner party. I mean, who uses just half an onion? Part of a can of green lentils? What are you supposed to do with that?  Breakfast pizza, that's what.

So you had too much fun and stayed up too late, that's okay.  You probably woke up feeling anxious for no apparent reason... maybe you dragged your over-tired self out for a run jog speedwalk long, sluggish dog walk just to prove you hadn't really overdone it.

Anyway, you're likely hungry and looking at a bunch of bits and pieces of stuff in the fridge that don't seem to go together.  Maybe you focused so much on having everything for the party, you forgot to plan anything specific for the next day.

No problem.  This is so easy, you can make it before your first cup of coffee.   (Er, during your first cup of coffee anyway.)  Make a pot of coffee.  Take the lazy way out and stream a gentle but happy Songza playlist.  And make this salad-sandwich-eggs&toast-leftover-lentils pizza-like-thing.  

(If you managed the faster than a sluggish dog walk activity, the cooking time is exactly right for stretching.)  

I promise you won't be sorry.

~~~

Now for the shameless self-promotion. If you like this recipe, please say so! Part of the contest criteria is how well received the lentil recipes are. Leave us a comment on this page*** telling us how delicious the meal looks. Go to the Canadian Lentils Facebook Page and "like", "share", and/or comment on our recipe. Go there anyway, as it's your best source right now to find inspiration for what to do with lentils.

***there seem to be problems leaving comments from iProducts... I am still trying to figure out how to fix this, but in the meantime, feel free to leave a comment on the Canadian Lentils Facebook post!

Be My, Be My Dutch Baby

In these northern climates, we really should be taking a cue from the south and use Mardi Gras as an excuse to fend off the dregs of winter with beads, sequins and feathers.  Instead, we will sit at home with our pancakes. 

Rather than the usual humdrum stack of hotcakes, the least we can do is add some excitement and make one uber-impressive big puffy pancake.

Dutch Baby Pancake with Spiced Apples

Dutch baby is a lot like an enormous Yorkshire pudding. The pancake itself is not overy sweet, and the ginger and black pepper give the apples a surprising but pleasant heat... a perfect counter to the sweet and slight tart of the apples. Nevermind how good it tastes though, the wow factor when you pull it out of the oven will make you feel like you didn't work hard enough for it.

for the pancake:


In the spirit of Fat Tuesday, use up some of the good stuff.

4 eggs
1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 c. (scant) whole wheat flour
1 c. milk
4 tsp local honey
1 tbsp lard or butter


for the apple topping:
 
2 or 3 med-sized apples*
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tbsp butter or lard

*we used Spartan apples; by this time of year almost any apple picked last fall, particularly if it wasn't stored well, is more of a cooking apple than an eating apple... use a tart apple for best results

When the dutch baby is done, it's puffed up all over and golden brown.  It will collapse as it begins to cool, don't worry about that.  Just make sure everyone's in the kitchen to see it emerge from the oven.

Pre-heat oven to 425F.  Put a cold cast iron skillet in the oven during the pre-heat so that the pan is good and hot when it's time to cook the dutch baby.

Put eggs, flour, milk and honey in a blender (in that order).  Blend on a low-ish speed to combine, then on a not-quite-high speed for 30-45 seconds.  Let sit at room temp while the oven finishes heating. 

When the oven is hot, open it and drop the lard onto the pan, quickly close the door.  Whiz the batter in the blender again to mix.  By now the lard should be melted.  Working quickly, open the oven and pull out the rack with the pan, pour the batter into the hot fat, push the rack back in, and close the door.  Turn the oven down to 400F and cook for 20-25 minutes.  DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN until at least 20 minutes has passed. 

Tart apples sweetened with a touch of honey are a good complement to
the heat of the ginger and pepper.

When you put the pancakes in the oven, get the apples started.  Toss the apple with lemon juice as you slice.  Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat, add apples and toss to coat, let cook 2 minutes.  Add spices, toss to coat, and cook until the apples soften, about 6 minutes, stirring occassionally.  Drizzle with honey, put a lid on the skillet and turn the heat down low to finish cooking (about 3-5 minutes).  Stir just before serving.

The pancake is done when it is puffed up high (including the center) and is golden brown. If you peek at it at 20 minutes and it's not done, close the door quickly and wait for 3-5 minutes longer.

To serve: Spoon apple mixture over dutch baby and sprinkle with icing sugar, to taste.

Mimic the outdoors inside: icing sugar creates a bit of snowfall on the apple-topped dutch baby.

 

~~~

Newfoundland is a quirky place. I don't mean that disparagingly, it's just the way of things. One of it's quirks is around Mardi Gras.  Every year, people dress up in costumes and converge on George Street in St. John's for a big outdoor street party.  Lots of dancing, lots of drinking, prizes for the best costumes... sounds not so strange for a Mardi Gras event, right?  Except it's in October.  The part of October more commonly known as Hallowe'en.  By which, I mean the weekend closest to (so, also, never on an actual Tuesday).

Maybe that's because it's still warm enough in October to mill around outdoors with a plastic cup of booze in your hands, dressed in a costume of questionable decorum? (Though that still doesn't explain calling it Mardi Gras).  The real Fat Tuesday, on the other hand, occurs in the worst part of winter... right when the rest of the civilized northern hemisphere is starting to believe spring will actually happen sometime soon; but we know it won't, not here.  That same trick of the Atlantic Ocean which keeps Newfoundland warm-ish through October pulls a fast one in March and does not let us shake winter off for a good long time yet. 

Having watched the entire available library of Treme while stuck indoors so much over the last few months, Fefe Noir and I have, admittedly, developed a little bit of New-Orleans-style-Mardi-Gras envy.  What we NEED this time of year is a big old silly street party, a way to defy the bleak outlook.  Fight the winter with beads, sequins, feathers and outdoor dancing. 

Realistically, we will stay in... but maybe we'll get all dressed up and listen to some marching band jazz while we eat our pancakes.