Cooking from Scratch
This is the shape of the pasta that we had at Roma Antica in San Francisco a few weeks back. We tried to make them when we made our Pear and Cheese filling for pasta, but we had problems. First, we tried filling round pieces of pasta, but, our pasta sheets were too thick, resulting in a lot of bunched up pasta at the top. Fortunately for you, and us, we’ve figured out the kinks and are ready to show you how to make these cute little bags of filled pasta.
Continue reading “Shaping Sacchetti”
When we made the Broccoli Strascinati the other day, we had no idea what strascinati meant, so we figured that we’d simply search for it and find out. Well, it turns out that strascinati is related to the Italian word for dragged. Hmm. Who knew? But, it also turns out that strascinati refers to a particular shape of pasta, and it’s one that scratchers can make by hand. Naturally, we’ll show you how so that you can add it to your ever growing list of pasta shapes.
Continue reading “Shaping Strascinati”
Looking for the best way to cook broccoli? We think we may have found it; after you scratch up a batch, feel free to thank us. This recipe is so good it might even convince broccoli haters to have a few bites. Now, we aren’t broccoli haters. We happen to love broccoli. We’ll eat the florets raw, we like cream of broccoli soup, we like steamed broccoli on baked potatoes — basically, we’ll eat broccoli regardless of how it’s prepared, but this recipe has them all beat.
Continue reading “Broccoli Strascinati”
We mentioned when we picked up our CSA share that included a pumpkin that we don’t carve it into a jack o’ lantern; instead, we eat it, by roasting it and scraping out the flesh. Sometimes we make Pumpkin Bread, sometimes Pumpkin Pie, and, sometimes, we have it as a main course in meals such as this one. (We actually use pumpkin a whole lot of ways, as you can see here).
Continue reading “Pumpkin Gnocchi with Sage Butter Sauce”
We have no idea if this is anything close to a traditional Italian pasta; we’ve never seen pasta filled with broccoli and Asiago cheese. Even so, we think this dish fits the spirit of an Italian staple. It’s pasta, for one, but, more importantly, it happens to use a few other ingredients that we had in excess. From what we see in traditional Italian recipes, they make do with what they have and try not to waste food. To us, it sounds as if Italians might be the original scratchers.
Continue reading “Broccoli and Asiago Agnolotti with Mushrooms”
If we had to guess, we’d say there are probably a million versions of minestrone soup. We figure that every family in Italy has several versions, because it’s a soup that changes with the seasons and with the vegetables that are available. But, the basic idea is pretty much the same: make a very hearty tomato-based vegetable soup with a few beans and a handful of pasta. If you follow that, and put in vegetables that you like, we don’t think you can go wrong.
Continue reading “Minestrone Soup”
Apparently, pansotti means something like “big belly” in an Italian dialect, so we’re going to use the Italian term for these shapes, and not the English translation. It just sounds nicer to say that we’re shaping pansotti. And, fortunately for everyone, these are a very simple filled pasta shape to make. We’re pretty sure you can make them based on a single photo.
Continue reading “Shaping Pansotti”