Listing all the cookbooks in my kitchen, I assigned a unique number to each. Following this, I listed all the usable recipe pages within each book. Next, I spent a few minutes trawling the net to find a random number generator where I can specify the range. I dutifully keyed in the cookbook range into the number generator and out popped 12. OK, so the chosen cookbook is 'Pasta Machine Cookbook' by Gina Steer. Next, I entered the page ranges and clicked 'generate'. Page 41!
Right then. I paged through the book to pg 41 and it looks like we'll be having Garganelli with Chicken for dinner. Sounds innocuous enough... Reading into the recipe I find out that it includes apricots. Yum! I love savoury dishes that include fruit.
First things first and I started making the pasta. I did this a good 3-4 hours before dinner because I wanted the pasta to be dried properly as Garganelli is a tubular shape and if it isn't dry before removing from the 'mould', it'll collapse in on itself and become a flat, ugly folded bit of pasta...
A basic fresh pasta recipe is one egg per 100g of plain flour (or Italian '00' flour), 1 tsp olive oil per 100g flour and salt to taste.
I mixed the salt through the flour in a bowl and created a well in the flour to add the eggs and the oil. Grabbing a fork, I start mixing in the flour, not rapidly, but by pulling in the flour into the liquid in stages following the edges of the flour around the circle.
Once all the egg and oil was mixed into the flour, I continued mixing to form a stiff dough. I didn't feel I needed to add any extra water as suggested by the recipe and in fact, found I needed to add a little more flour because my dough was very sticky. The dough should feel wet, but not sticky. I removed the dough from the bowl and on the counter I continued kneading the dough rotating it a quarter turn with each knead. When the dough felt nice and smooth, I covered it in clingfilm to keep it moist.
Sheila, my wife, gave me the pasta machine about 2 years ago for Christmas and whilst I have used it occasionally, it could be used more! Out the box it comes and I bolted it onto our kitchen counter. I removed the pasta from the clingfilm and cut it in half and started feeding the pasta through the machine on setting 1. This is the thickest rolling setting and in this step, I passed through the pasta 3-4 times, folding it each time before inserting again.
I needed to cut the pasta into more manageable pieces at this point because rolling the pasta thinner now would just cause heartache as it wouldn't fit into the roller. I reduced the thickness setting to 3 and passed through the pasta, then reduced further to setting 5 and passed through the pasta again. My final pass through was on setting 8 which I felt was thin enough. I have never made pasta on the thinnest setting 10 yet... Am I wrong in this? Maybe I should just go for it one day and see what happens!
Next involved cutting the strips of pasta into 5cm squares and rolling them around a wooden skewer or stick corner to corner into the required shape. The recipe suggests a wooden spoon but you'd need ALOT of wooden spoons in your kitchen to shape the full amount of pasta and allow to dry in place before using the spoon for more.
I used my pasta drying rack (yes, included as part of the pasta gift!) to roll the shape around and I allowed the pasta to dry on the rack before starting the next batch of garganelli.
Whilst all this drying was going on, I grabbed a beer and joined Sheila on the sofa to watch a couple of episodes of 'Fringe' season 3... yup, we're both a little hooked!
Dinner time and I needed to start the prep.
I stuck a pot full of water on the stove to boil and added a little salt. Next, a frenzied 10 minutes of chopping chicken breast (250g), chopping dried apricot (50g), slicing 1 red onion into wedges, crushing a clove of garlic and running into the garden to grab some fresh rosemary which I removed from the stalk and roughly chopped.
I measured out the 30ml of dry white wine and lastly, I grabbed the pecorino cheese from the fridge and using a vegetable peeler, I sliced off a few shavings of cheese to sprinkle on top of the pasta.
Right, the frying pan is on the stove heating up. In went a spray or two of olive oil, then the onion and garlic once the oil had heated a little. A couple of minutes and a few quick flicks of the wrist to toss and then the chicken went into the pan. I always season at this point, so in went a twist of salt and pepper.
I now added the pasta to the boiling water as this only needs 2-3 minutes to cook. Once the chicken had sealed, I chucked in the remaining ingredients sans orange pepper (bugger!) and the white wine which goes in later.
Right! The pasta is starting to float, so a couple seconds more and off the stove and into the colander. I added a little of the pasta water to the frying pan before I drained the pasta. I added the white wine at this point too. This created a lovely hiss and aroma as the pan deglazed. I quickly added the drained pasta to the frying pan and with another couple of wrist flicks to toss everything together, dinner was ready to serve.
Sheila came through to the kitchen as I was spooning the pasta into bowls... yes, her timing has always been perfect! Finishing touches then? I placed the pecorino shavings on top of the pasta, added a sprig of fresh rosemary and a twist of pepper and dinner was done.
Plonked on the sofa, watching Fringe, I thought through the dish in front of me.
Yes, it would have benefited from the orange pepper - Lesson? Read the recipe correctly and shop accordingly. I am very used to cooking on the fly and using what is available so need to plan better.
Yes, some of the pasta had collapsed because the drying time of my first batch was insufficient - Lesson? Allow sufficient drying time for each batch of pasta. My problem was that I rolled out too much pasta and the rolled pasta was drying out, so I rushed the shaped pasta drying time on the first batch. Next time I will roll only what is needed per batch and cover the remaining pasta in clingfilm till I'm ready to roll the second batch.
I felt the overall dish could have benefited from a little more sauce than just the pasta cooking liquid and 30ml of wine. Is that just my Anglicised pallet though or did I maybe reduce the white wine too much?
However, dinner was good, it was fresh and it was tasty. I also had loads of fun preparing the dish from scratch.
I'm really looking forward to my next challenge!
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