Pasta

go directly to marcella hazans work. she has the 411.
from my own experience i know that they type of flour you use is key, and
also the length of time you let the dough rest. i've had the best tasting
results with spinach pasta. i use whole dried crumbled leaves and its just
wonderful stuff. all it needs is a shot of good olive oil and some lemon. now im drooling.

Iv'e been successful making pasta with the following ingredients:

chestnuts, porcini dust, spinach, almonds, roasted red bells, carrots, and various herbs.

Another vote for the spinach.

pastas

My Italian hubby and I make our own pasta and usually just make it plain. You can add olive oil, salt, eggs and a variety of flour(s) but I like to keep it simple. If you want to try to imitate Italian pasta keep it simple.

In Italy, they make pasta with eggs (typical) without eggs (in Umbria) and with differerent types of wheat. I've even tasted homemade squid ink pasta and squid ink risotto. Adding stuff to the dough really changes the texture of pasta. What Italians tend to focus on is the sauce. Just make sure you let the dough rest and dry a bit before you cook it and make sure it is al dente.

The sauces are numerous and varied, my faves are tagliatelle with sausage and chicken livers, chitarra with fresh porcini, papparedelle with rabbit ragu, rigatoni or spagetti carbonara, linguini con vongole (clams) or with puttanesca and finally pasta with sea urchin sauce. I make all of the above except the sea urchin, my hubby makes that well.

The filled pastas are an entirely different story. I live in Torino, Italy and this area is famous for it's agnoletti, small filled ravioli, the pasta is paper thin (see through acutally) and the sauce is usually a silky broth. Maybe when you have finished experimenting with the dough, you can mess with the sauces.

Hey oh

Ok, I was browsing the net a few years back and looked into pasta and its history and all. I recall finding an Italian government site that stipulated the ingredients of pasta. Semolina #1 or #2, salt and water. Nothing more. Now, I don't recall how that rule was applied, if it was for domestic or region only, or if it applyed to an appalachiend pasta.....

Hmmm, also found similar government regulations controling the ingredients to pesto.....

All the same... I have used paprika and tumeric to colour pasta. They give pasta a very nice earth tone. I guess squid ink and blue masa could also be used, and they you can theme a mid west amerind type dinner with say squash and corn and beans.........

Try garlic infused oil and flat leaf parsley in the mix. I learned much ado about pasta from an elderly Italian landlady years ago. She did hers by hand (no machines) and made the greatest ravioli I've ever had. Unfortunately, she wouldn't give me the recipe for her lobster ravioli, but I did get the garlic & parsley one! :lips:

I've pleased many a picky foodie guest with it. You can dress it with shallot and oil/butter sauce or a light cream/parm sauce. Great stuff.

Macaroni vs 'fresh' pasta

I have no idea why this controversy has haunted me over the past few months, but I have learned that there are essentially two broad categories of pasta. More on this in a minute--

It all started New Year's Eve, when some friends of mine and I were at our favorite local Italian restaurant. During a small sidebar conversation with Massimo, the talented Italian-born chef, he dogmatically asserted that 'pasta' is made only with 100% Durum Semolina flour, which is a coarser grain, high-protein, yellow flour. Everything else, he asserted, is 'noodles' not pasta, and an insulting bastardization of the term.

Well, as I have come to learn, he's only partially right.

The pasta known as 'macaroni' (macaroni is not a shape, it is a type of pasta--'elbow' is a common shape) or, if it's enriched with other nutrients, 'enriched macaroni product,' usually comes in dried form and most high-quality Italian dried pastas of this type only contain two ingredients: durum semolina and water (and they don't even really contain much water when dried!) In the old days, women used to kneed this incredibly tough dough by foot for hours to get it to the consistency necessary for shaping it. I don't recommend you try this at home--last time I did my hands (yes, I chickened out and used my hands to kneed it) were sore for two days, and I was cranky and tired for the rest of the evening due to the exertion.

Anyway, macaroni-type pasta has high protein, and relatively low starch content and is customarilly cooked until 'al dente' or 'to-the-tooth'--a correctly cooked piece of spaghetti when broken will contain a visible white speck in the middle of raw pasta.

The second category is so-called 'fresh' pasta. Some people use all-purpose flour, and some use 50/50 semolina and all-purpose, but the main difference is the addition of eggs, and/or oil and water. It makes a richer, more eggy, starchy noodle suitable for stuffed pastas like ravioli, and for lasagna. Although I don't like it personally cooked to mush, it is cooked until DONE, not until 'al dente' as the fresh pasta does not have the same substance with which to (sort of) crunch, or meet your bite with that pleasant degree of resistance, a la macaroni.

This is the kind you've seen your Italian grandmother make at home, no doubt, with that little egg-well in the middle of the mound of flour on the cutting board---ah, memories. You can also use your food processor if you're a wimp.

It is also quite hospitible to innovation as well--substitute (more!) truffle oil for olive, use squid ink, or thawed, rung-out-dry frozen spinach, or tomato paste to create different flavors.