May
06
2009
0

Lotsa Pasta

Mummy and I picked up some semolina flour yesterday and then decided to make some pasta from scratch. I can remember her hanging pasta between the backs of two chairs when I was little… ah the good old days. These noodles are thick, chewy and a pretty buttery yellow color when they’re all done. They would work really well in a soup (I’m thinking chicken noodle soup… mmmm… without the chicken, that is. Oh how I miss chicken noodle soup.) or old school with a bit of pasta sauce. If you have a pasta machine, great! Crank it to about 6 and roll away! If you’re doing it by hand, make them as thin as possible, they’ll still be chewier than you think when they’re done cooking.

Twelve Mile Noodles

This recipe makes a lot of pasta (a few pounds of ravioli or enough noodles for about seven people) so make a half batch or refrigerate it if you’re not planning on feeding an army.

3 c. Semolina Flour

1 c. All purpose flour

2/3 c. water

3 eggs

2 T. oil

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients and combine thoroughly (I find that making a little well in the center of the dry ingredients and then pouring the liquid into the center and slowly combining the two, working my way from the center outwards works well if you’re hand mixing).

Make a large ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Let it rest for an hour, or refrigerate overnight (if you refrigerate, let it rest and warm up to room temperature for at least an hour before you roll it out).

After an hour, divide into six sections. Roll out each section as thin as you can into a long, narrow rectangle. Thoroughly dust with semolina and then, roll the dough up, beginning on a narrow side so that you have a narrow, thick roll (like a cinnamon roll).

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Carefully slice the dough into 1/8 inch sections. Unroll each slice and hang to dry for about 30 minutes. Toss into boiling water for four minutes or refrigerate for up to three days or so (once it’s completely dry). Makes enough for about seven hearty servings of pasta.p1030453

Written by Hammy in: How To, Main Dish, Pasta | Tags: , ,
Jan
29
2009
0

Contented Sighs…

I thought perhaps we’d be having more people come to dinner tonight than actually did and I started cooking with this in mind. I started to make a Pear Upside-Down Cake at 3:30, pulled it out of the oven at 5 and stuck the Baked Pasta Casserole into the still hot oven to get oozy and toasty as these cheesy things are wont to do. Alas it was only the three of us and I’m glad one of my favorite things just happens to be leftovers.

Ok, so this is really REALLY not my picture. I horked it from 101 cookbooks where I got the recipe. When I cook, I usually do it for dinner when the light is not so good and rather yellow. This happened with the pasta. I love this dish and I wanted to do it some justice.

I was intrigued by this cake recipe because it wanted buttermilk as well as freshly ginger, two things I definitely don’t dabble in every day. Or at all. I was totally unprepared for how beautiful fresh ginger smells. It has a clean, sweet smell that gets worked into your fingers as you grate it and into the wood of our counter top.

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It turned out to be a heavy, molassesy moist cake that was still warm after we’d finished with dinner. With a chunk of vanilla ice cream melting into the edges, soaked up by the cake, everything felt right with the world. Right now both of these are sitting happily together on their respective dessert and pasta shelves in my tummy.

Written by Hammy in: Cakes, Food, Pasta, Sweets | Tags: , ,

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