Thursday, December 17, 2015

fettuccine


Regular dry pasta noodles are made with 100% semolina type flour and water. The dough is dry and crumbly and by industrial machinery shoved through bronze plates with holes under high pressure. The pasta is carefully fully dried in stages.

Italian cookbooks even, say, Mario Batali, instruct cooks to use all purpose flour for pasta. This results is elastic noodles when rolled. Bouncy. They're fun. Especially for kids. Distinctly different from extruded semolina noodles. But not particularly dense nor toothsome nor hearty. Noodle dough, like pizza dough can be strengthened with semolina. It makes the dough heavier. Heavier semolina for part of the flour and egg yolks are what make this meal so hearty and satisfying. Regular noodles work too, but these are fantastic. 



The dough is rolled out, much easier than it sounds, flour heavily, folded in thirds and cut by hand. This is rustic as pasta gets. The real deal. 

Sauce can be anything. I'm particularly fond of cream flavored with s/p and dry mustard, maybe chile flakes, that's about it. 

I also like aglio e olio very much, similar to this. At one time a fallback standard. The sort of thing you whip out at home from the clubs in place of a cheese or fried sandwich. Literally burn broccoli in olive oil quickly on one side and add shavings of garlic at the end, there's your aglio e olio, douse with prepared beef broth (carton) and add angel hair pasta right into the liquid. It cooks in two minutes. Shave Parmigiano over noodles, broccoli and beef broth. A one-pan deal. Perfect for drunks.

1 comment:

deborah said...

When I grow up I want to be like Chip.