April 25 2004, 11:27 PM Sign Under Test

One of this summer's projects is slated to be northern-style homemade pasta. We have already managed this a bit and gotten good results for it. It is possible that this path may end up somewhat wider than expected, as the summer that was to be spent in investigation of Greek cookery which in turn ran to explorations of the foods all around the rim of the Mediterranean, dominos falling westward, the last skittering through Lebanon and into the interior. It might even be a similar experience to the brief feints with French Cheffery, occasions almost always soon fading away for lack of patience. I do not think this will be the case: fresh pasta is easy to make with the pleasingly low-tech glinted help of a hand cranked machine, and as with most simple things made fresh from good stocks, very very good to eat.

One of the things I like about bread is that the short list of stuff that goes into it: good flour, good water, good yeast and salt. One can add other things, but those are the minimum. Fresh pasta in the northern style is even simpler: good eggs and good flour. A bit of oil or water can be added to smooth things out, but most claim such things are optional, and some would even go so far as to cry heresy of such practices. At minimum: eggs and flour mixed, kneaded, rested, and rolled.

(I will put here that this sort of pasta is a very different sort of beast from the stuff at market in boxes: that pasta is generally a mixture of flour (usually harder) and water, and is a very different thing. Not a worse thing.)

As with bread, the tricks are found in the manipulation of the stuff; the dough needs a good stomping before it rests, and it must rest a good while before it's ready for its thinning. We have used a machine to make our dough thin and flat in many steps and pieces, and again to cut it to ribbons to hang upon the dowel slung over the coffee making shelf. I have it in my head, however, to by summer's end learn the art and craft of hand rolling to a hopefully palatable level. I also hope to play with shapes like farfalle, which look reasonable, and tortellini, which are more than likely to leave me strung out on the floor, dusted with semolina and counting the stains on the ceiling. We shall see. We can make good noodles, and that might be enough. As usual my guides are many, but a pretty good one is Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan.

The most spectacular effects so far of a good, multi-course freshly done pasta dinner are the simplicity of most of the dishes, the deeply mixing flavors, the bottles of wine passed forth and from among friends, and the way the meal lingers as arms fall over the backs of chairs, free hands hunting morsels from the field on the table. We made that dinner last for four hours, somehow, and the results certainly demand further investigation, if only for that.

On distant horizons I see promises of Asian noodle craft, but not for some time yet.

This evening's minor triumph in a small batch of (more or less) cinnamon almond praline. I do not think I have the mind to be a candy maker.