"Whose crazy idea was this?!" was what I probably was thinking Wednesday as I reshelved Marc Vetri's Mastering Pasta book. Quite an adventure.
Hubby was away for the night in CA and my older daughter was off at gymnastics, so that left me and my younger daughter to come up with an idea for dinner. My bright idea was that since I had all this fresh basil, and I'd seen the basil dough recipe in his book the other day, those 2 things should add up to one delicious meal. And in a roundabout way, they did, but not without me making several adjustments.
Since it was just the 2 of us, I decided to halve the recipe and make only 1/2# of fresh basil pasta dough. What probably would have taken an Italian mama a matter of minutes to prepare ended up spanning the length of close to 2 hours. Now granted, this timeframe included prepping the mise en place for both the pasta dough and the sauce, along with crostini, resting the dough 30 minutes, then hand cranking it thru the pasta machine a minimum of 2 times per pressure setting from 7 down to 3, then rolling it thru the fettuccine blades before boiling a couple of minutes, combining with my sauce, then wolfing it down.
First off, this recipe spans pages 142 to 145, and is for Parsley Dough along with other varieties, including chestnut, chive, cocoa, lemon, or pistachio. Even excluding the photo page and the page with the various preps, you're still left with 2 pages full of instruction. Yikes! Now, I love to read, but even I finally tossed the book aside at one point and began winging it.
There's just far too many detailed and minute instructions. If you've absolutely never prepared pasta or some other style of dough before, you'd probably want to read thru the steps a couple of times. And while it's great that he's explaining how it should feel at different stages, and why you roll it several times, along with what settings you may wish to stop at for any number of the multitude of shapes you'll be wanting to form for your particular dish, it seems to go on forever.
I'll immediately go into what I'd do next time I make this dough:
1 - Go ahead and make a full pound (or more). It was just far too much effort to put forth for 2 large servings. Vetri espouses freezing dough up to 3 months - good to know for another time as long as you get the dough out the night before so it can thaw in the fridge.
2 - Do NOT use the first method of utilizing a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Italian mamas have for centuries placed flour(s) on their work surface, making a well in the center, adding egg yolks and a puree of herb, spinach, etc. if "flavoring" the dough, then gradually mixing the flour into the eggs with their fingers before kneading.
I had a HOT MESS attempting to detach the dough from my Kitchenaid stainless mixer bowl - it was worse than any other food items I've EVER had to scrape out of a bowl. Absolutely frighteningly difficult, to the point where I actually considered just trashing the whole lot. I attempted using a plastic bowl scraper, moved on to a silicone spatula, and with a desperate final effort, scraped it out with my fingertips. I believe my error there was in a touch too much water added, as once I had it out and kneaded it, added a dusting of bench floor from time to time, it was perfectly fine to handle.
Since it was just the 2 of us, I decided to halve the recipe and make only 1/2# of fresh basil pasta dough. What probably would have taken an Italian mama a matter of minutes to prepare ended up spanning the length of close to 2 hours. Now granted, this timeframe included prepping the mise en place for both the pasta dough and the sauce, along with crostini, resting the dough 30 minutes, then hand cranking it thru the pasta machine a minimum of 2 times per pressure setting from 7 down to 3, then rolling it thru the fettuccine blades before boiling a couple of minutes, combining with my sauce, then wolfing it down.
First off, this recipe spans pages 142 to 145, and is for Parsley Dough along with other varieties, including chestnut, chive, cocoa, lemon, or pistachio. Even excluding the photo page and the page with the various preps, you're still left with 2 pages full of instruction. Yikes! Now, I love to read, but even I finally tossed the book aside at one point and began winging it.
There's just far too many detailed and minute instructions. If you've absolutely never prepared pasta or some other style of dough before, you'd probably want to read thru the steps a couple of times. And while it's great that he's explaining how it should feel at different stages, and why you roll it several times, along with what settings you may wish to stop at for any number of the multitude of shapes you'll be wanting to form for your particular dish, it seems to go on forever.
I'll immediately go into what I'd do next time I make this dough:
1 - Go ahead and make a full pound (or more). It was just far too much effort to put forth for 2 large servings. Vetri espouses freezing dough up to 3 months - good to know for another time as long as you get the dough out the night before so it can thaw in the fridge.
| Blanching basil leaves |
| Basil leaves after blanching - still vibrant green |
| Basil dough after kneading 5 minutes |
2 - Do NOT use the first method of utilizing a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Italian mamas have for centuries placed flour(s) on their work surface, making a well in the center, adding egg yolks and a puree of herb, spinach, etc. if "flavoring" the dough, then gradually mixing the flour into the eggs with their fingers before kneading.
I had a HOT MESS attempting to detach the dough from my Kitchenaid stainless mixer bowl - it was worse than any other food items I've EVER had to scrape out of a bowl. Absolutely frighteningly difficult, to the point where I actually considered just trashing the whole lot. I attempted using a plastic bowl scraper, moved on to a silicone spatula, and with a desperate final effort, scraped it out with my fingertips. I believe my error there was in a touch too much water added, as once I had it out and kneaded it, added a dusting of bench floor from time to time, it was perfectly fine to handle.
3 - Pressing onward, feeling frustrated over the amount of effort versus the reward of fresh pasta, after the initial 30 minute resting period wrapped in plastic, I began the rolling process using a hand-cranked roller set attached to my countertop. Why they don't have suction feet opposite the side with the handle (the side you clamp onto the counter) is a mystery. If you crank hard at all, the unclamped edge lifts off the surface, increasing the effort by forcing you to slow down that much more in an attempt to keep all sides of the roller on an even surface.
Onward I plunged, tho, finally being rewarded with 3 long strips of pasta dough. Now, everything would have been just a touch simpler if I had just read the instruction sheet included in my pasta rolling machine, since this is a valuable remark that Vetri omits: once you've rolled the dough into sheets, allow it to rest 10 minutes, so it will dry slightly and be easier to crank thru your cutting blades without sticking, and doing away with the possibility that you'll have to separate the strands by hand before cooking, as we found necessary with the first sheet I cut.
| Pasta sheet, pressure #4 |
Onward I plunged, tho, finally being rewarded with 3 long strips of pasta dough. Now, everything would have been just a touch simpler if I had just read the instruction sheet included in my pasta rolling machine, since this is a valuable remark that Vetri omits: once you've rolled the dough into sheets, allow it to rest 10 minutes, so it will dry slightly and be easier to crank thru your cutting blades without sticking, and doing away with the possibility that you'll have to separate the strands by hand before cooking, as we found necessary with the first sheet I cut.
| Finished rolling at pressure #3 |
| Cutting fettuccine strands |
| This is 1/2# of dough |
Now, if anyone's interested, I'll pass along the recipe. I will make this dough again, whether with basil or any of the other variations, but ignore the instructions other than the measured ingredients list, and just use my common sense.
Here's are photos of my heirloom tomato sauce ingredients, along with my finished preparation. It's a variation of a previous heirloom tomato sauce, adding sautéed onions, a ladleful of the pasta water, a chiffonade of basil leaves, S&P, and a grating of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Tasty enough that I'll do it again! In fact, it's noon here and I'd love to have a bowl of this right now...Ciao mi amores!
| Heirloom tomatoes (I used yellow and red) |
| Diced heirloom tomatoes and sautéed onions |
| Chopped burrata cheese topped with fresh-ground pepper and a drizzle of EVO - to be smeared on crostini |
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