Read In the Hands of a Chef Online
Authors: Jody Adams
In the Hands of a Chef (22 page)
O
nce in a while I
only need one ½ pound of fresh pasta dough (a half-recipe). If I know I’ll use the remainder within a few days, I simply make the full pound of dough and roll out half for whatever I’m making, saving the rest as a tightly wrapped ball in the refrigerator. It will keep for up to 4 days; after that, the gluten starts to break down. If I only want to make
½
pound of pasta, I follow the recipe, using 1 cup flour, 1 extra-large egg, 1 extra-large egg yolk, and 1 tablespoon water; I divide the dough into 3 balls instead of 6. A third alternative is simply to buy ½ pound of pasta dough and roll it out yourself. The pasta store near me, in addition to a variety of noodles and ravioli, sells fresh dough, uncut sheets, and even ravioli molds and pastry wheels.
Before cutting noodles, allow the sheets to dry (not on top of each other) on floured kitchen towels for 5 to 10 minutes. Wait just until the dough is no longer sticky before cutting—but not too long, or the dough will break when you try to run it through the cutters. After cutting, pile the noodles in soft bundles on floured towels or cutting board. It’s OK if they dry out before cooking.
If making ravioli, use each sheet as soon as you finish rolling it, leaving the other pieces of dough tightly wrapped. Using the dough while it is still moist helps to make a good seal. Place cut ravioli on a tray lined with a towel dusted with semolina flour. Completed ravioli can sit out for several hours before cooking or be refrigerated overnight, tightly covered or wrapped in plastic. They can also be frozen; Put them on a flour-dusted tray in the freezer. As soon as they’re hard, transfer to a freezer bag. They’ll keep for a month.
Tagliatelle and fettuccine are essentially the same noodle, about ⅜ inch wide, with different names depending on the region: It’s fettuccine in the south of Italy, tagliatelle in the north.
Roll out sheets of pasta through the #6 setting. The recipes for lasagna and for nidimi call for various sizes of squares and rectangles, so cut as directed in the individual recipe.
Pappardelle is a wide hand-cut noodle, often seen with tiny zigzag edges. Lay a sheet of pasta on a floured surface and use a pastry wheel (which will give it the zigzag edge) or a sharp knife to cut inch-wide noodles.
After making the master recipe for Fresh Pasta, divide the dough into 5 pieces. Roll each piece into a sheet of pasta 20 inches long (it doesn’t have to be exact) and 5 inches wide. Lay a sheet horizontally on a flat, floured work surface in front of you. To understand where the filling goes, imagine folding the sheet in half lengthwise and then cutting it crosswise to make 8 square ravioli, about 2½ inches on a side. Place 8 spoonfuls of filling on the dough in a single row along the side nearest you. Fold the pasta over. Cut between the pockets of filling with a pastry wheel. Press the air out of the individual ravioli with your fingertips, working outward from the filling, and seal the edges by pressing on them with your fingertips or using the back of a fork (kids like doing this).
If the dough is no longer moist when you’re making the ravioli, brush the empty space around the filling with water before folding the dough. This will help make the seal stick. Transfer the finished ravioli to a sheet pan covered with a kitchen towel dusted with flour. A pound of pasta dough will make approximately 40 ravioli.
A
sauce of uncooked tomatoes is
one of late summer’s culinary payoffs, the reward for waiting for locally grown tomatoes to arrive, whether from your own garden or the nearest farmers’ market. Since the components retain their distinctive flavors instead of blending together, the dish is only as good as its poorest ingredient—don’t skimp on the quality of olive oil or substitute second-rate tomatoes. This is a dish of sharp, contrasting flavors with lots of heat. If you want to tone things down, substitute spinach for the arugula and cut back on the serrano peppers.
MAKES 4 ENTRÉE SERVINGS
Kosher salt
1 pound high-quality dried linguine
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 serrano peppers, stemmed, seeded, and thinly sliced (use less for a milder sauce)
3 tablespoons capers, rinsed
10 ripe medium tomatoes, peeled (see page 55), seeded, and chopped into ½-inch dice
2½ cups arugula, rinsed thoroughly, drained, and coarsely chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
2½ounces Pecorino Romano shavings
1.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Season with salt. Add the linguine and stir so that the strands don’t stick together. (If the pot isn’t large enough for the linguine to lie flat, either break the strands in half or hold one end of the pasta bundle while the other end softens in the boiling water, then release the pasta into the water.) Cover the pot if necessary to bring the water back to a boil. Cook for 1 minute, then stir again. Continue to check periodically to make sure the strands aren’t sticking together, and cook until the pasta is tender but still offers a little bit of resistance when you bite into it. Begin checking for doneness 7 or 8 minutes after it has returned to a boil.
2.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add the garlic, peppers, and capers. Cook until the garlic is tender, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat.
3.
When the linguine is done, use a measuring cup to scoop out ¼ cup pasta water and set it aside. Drain the pasta, transfer it to a large warm bowl, and add the tomatoes.
4.
Add the reserved pasta water to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour the mixture over the pasta, add the arugula, and toss well. Taste, then add salt and pepper if necessary. Serve immediately, offering the pecorino shavings on the side.
I
n its home region of
Tuscany, pappardelle is often served with game sauces. Tuscans think of these wide noodles as standing up to the big-bodied flavors of wild mushrooms, duck, and rabbit. Seafood, typically lighter fare, is associated with linguine or spaghetti. I’ve taken some liberties here by bringing seafood together with these noodles, but the combination of smoked mussels, roasted peppers, and black olives makes this a bold sauce with a lot of texture.
Traditional thinking holds that sauces with olive oil adhere to dried pasta better than fresh noodles, which are preferred with cream sauces and meat ragouts. While I generally go along with this, seafood sauces seem more problematic, with a little more room for personal choice. Squid and clams seem happiest, to my taste, with linguine, but I prefer fresh noodles with two of the three seafood sauces I’ve included in this chapter.
MAKES 4 ENTRÉE SERVINGS
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, cut into ¼-inch dice
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 yellow peppers, roasted (see page 99), peeled, seeded, stemmed, and cut into ¼-inch-wide strips
3 plum tomatoes, peeled (see page 55), seeded, and cut into ¼-inch-wide strips
½ teaspoon chopped fresh marjoram
¼ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons chopped pitted black olives
24 medium shrimp (about 1 pound), peeled, deveined, and split lengthwise
½ pint smoked mussels
1 recipe Fresh Pasta (pages 142-43), cut into pappardelle (see page 144)
DO AHEAD:
Roast and peel the peppers, peel the shrimp, and peel the tomatoes a day in advance. Wait, however, until the day of serving to chop the tomatoes, so they don’t dry out.
1.
Put a large pot of water on to boil.
2.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and peppers and cook for 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, marjoram, and red pepper flakes, and cook for 5 minutes. Add the shrimp, olives, and mussels and cook until the shrimp are just cooked through, 3 to 4 minutes. Keep warm.
3.
Season the boiling water with salt, add the pappardelle, and stir so that the strands don’t stick together. Cover the pot if necessary to bring the water back to a boil. Cook for 1
minute, then stir again. Continue to check periodically to make sure the strands aren’t sticking together, and cook until the pasta is tender but still offers a little bit of resistance when you bite into it, about
3
minutes. Before draining the pasta, use a measuring cup to scoop out ¼ cup of the pasta water. Set it aside.
4.
Pour the pasta into a colander, then transfer the pasta to a large warm bowl. Pour the sauce over it and toss well. If the sauce is too thick to coat the pasta, add a little of the reserved pasta water to thin it, then toss again. Serve immediately.
T
he scallops and saffron in
this dish seem distinctly French, but the cornmeal pasta would feel right at home in Tuscany. The combination is a dish with intense aromas of saffron and scallops that gradually give way to subtler hints of corn and tarragon. Cornmeal pasta is exactly the right choice here; its textured, rustic quality keeps the dish from tipping over into unctuousness.
MAKES 4 ENTRÉE SERVINGS
PAPPARDELLE
1⅓ cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling out the dough
2 tablespoons fine cornmeal
2 extra-large eggs
SAUCE
2 ears corn
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Small pinch of saffron, steeped in ½ cup dry white wine
8 plum tomatoes, peeled (see page 55), seeded, and chopped into ½-inch dice
1 pound bay or small sea scallops
½ teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1. Put the flour and cornmeal in a food processor. Beat the eggs in a bowl with a fork. With the food processor running, add the beaten eggs in a steady stream. Process until the dough comes together and is smooth and elastic, about 4 minutes. If the dough seems sticky, add a little more flour. If it’s too dry, add a few drops of water. Put the ball of dough in a bowl and cover with plastic. Let rest for 20 minutes.
2. Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Cover 5 of the pieces with plastic. Flatten the remaining piece of dough slightly with your hand, dust it with flour, and crank it through a manual pasta machine with the rollers set at their maximum distance apart, the #1 setting. Fold the dough in thirds as though you were folding a business letter and run it through the machine again, feeding the narrow side into the rollers. Repeat the process of folding and rolling 4 or 5 more times. This process kneads the dough and prepares it for the next step of thinning it. Don’t hesitate to sprinkle the dough with flour as necessary as you continue running it through the machine; you don’t want it to stick to the rollers.
3. Gradually roll the dough to the correct thinness, narrowing the distance between the rollers with each pass of the dough. After you’ve rolled the sheet through the #6 setting, it should be thin enough. Transfer the sheet of pasta to a towel dusted with flour and let it dry for 5 to 10 minutes before cutting. While the first sheet is drying, roll out the next piece of dough.
4. To cut the pappardelle, lay the sheet of pasta on a floured surface and use a pastry wheel (to give it a zigzag edge) or a sharp knife to cut into ¾-inch-wide noodles. Arrange the pappardelle in a soft pile on a board or kitchen towel dusted with semolina flour. Repeat the process with the remaining pieces of dough. The pasta can sit out at room temperature for several hours.
5. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil and season with salt. Prepare a bowl of ice water. Add the corn to the boiling water and cook for 2 minutes. Pull out the corn and submerge it in the ice water. After the corn has cooled, cut the kernels off the cobs and set aside. Run the dull edge of a knife down the cobs to extract the remaining corn “milk.” Add to the corn kernels.
6. Put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta. When it starts to simmer, proceed to the next step.
7. Heat ¼ cup of the olive oil in a medium sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper, and cook until the onion is tender, about 3 minutes. Add the saffron and white wine and simmer for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook for 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.
8. Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large sauté pan over high heat. Season the scallops with salt and pepper and add to the pan in a single layer. Sear until golden brown on the first side. Don’t move them around until they’ve gotten a good sear and are ready to be flipped; they tend to release their juices if jostled, and then they steam rather than sear. Flip and sear on the opposite side. The scallops should still have a creamy texture inside when done.
9. Add the tomato mixture, corn, and herbs to the pan with the scallops. Toss until heated through, about 30 seconds. Season with the lemon juice and salt and pepper. Remove from heat and keep warm.
10. Meanwhile, season the boiling water with salt, add the pappardelle, and stir so that the strands don’t stick together. Cover the pot if necessary to bring the water back to a boil. Cook for 1 minute, then stir again. Continue to check periodically to make sure the strands aren’t sticking together, and cook until the pasta is tender but still offers a little bit of resistance when you bite into it, about 3 minutes. Before draining the pasta, use a measuring cup to scoop out ¼ cup of the pasta water. Set it aside.
11. Pour the pasta into a colander, then transfer it to a large warm bowl. Pour the sauce over the pasta and toss well. If the sauce is too thick to coat the pasta, add a little of the reserved pasta water to thin it, then toss again. Serve immediately.