Cooking from Scratch
I think we first saw this cool pasta shape in the book Flour + Water: Pasta, by Thomas McNaughton; we’re not positive, but pretty sure, as it shows a huge number of pasta shapes and how to make them. Of course, once you see these, you’ve pretty much figured out how to shape caramelle. Oh, and, of course, caramelle means candies in Italian.
Continue reading “Shaping Caramelle Pasta”
Isn’t there always one? You know the one, the one person who, for whatever reason, just loves spaghetti (the pasta shape) and not a single other shape of pasta. No matter how much you explain that it’s all made from the same dough, they still want only spaghetti. Perhaps they like the fact that you can wind the pasta around the fork, or perhaps the fun part is slurping down the strands.
Continue reading “Spaghetti alla Chitarra”
Right before Christmas, we were perusing books in one of those chain bookstores (when we buy books, we get them from our local independent bookseller) and happened to look through the book flour + water : pasta, by Thomas McNaughton, and spied some pastas that looked like little witches’ hats: cappelletti. They looked pretty easy, so we thought that we’d try to make some.
Continue reading “Shaping Cappelletti”
This is probably the most ambitious shaped pasta we’ve ever made, and, initially, we were really thinking of making ravioli. But we figured, what’s the worst that could happen? We make horrible looking tortelloni (a larger version of tortellini). So what! What’s the best that could happen? We’d learn a new skill. Great! So, with almost no downside, and a huge upside to shaping tortelloni, who wouldn’t at least want to try it?
Continue reading “Shaping Tortelloni”
The witching hour is closing in! We rushed this pasta shape into production here at Scratchin’ Central so you can make up a batch of these Pipistrellini (our guess at small bat in Italian) for Halloween dinner.
Simply roll out a batch of fresh pasta dough (we worked with about 1/8 of the dough at a time) and use a bat-shaped cookie cutter to cut out a bunch of bats.
We placed each bat over a small wooden stake in case vampires are about (really a chopstick) to make for something approaching a 3D shape. Once finished, you’ll be ready to serve your bats in a blood-red sauce!
What a fun shape for Halloween. Fives!
As you’ve probably noticed over the years, we really like to make pasta from scratch. We think it’s the easiest way to improve your pasta dishes: just use fresh pasta instead of the dried stuff. Now, don’t get us wrong; we use the dried pasta, too. Especially for tube-shaped pasta such as elbows, rigatoni, or penne. Since we don’t extrude our pasta dough, it seems that tube-shapes are out.
Continue reading “Shaping Garganelli”
We have this idea, perhaps mistakenly, that most people don’t make their own pasta because it seems either too hard, or they think that they need some sort of special equipment. While a pasta roller is really nice to use, it’s in no way essential. And, sometimes, you just want your pasta to have that rustic texture, so it looks homemade, as well as holding the sauce better than if it were more like store-bought.
Continue reading “Pici, or Hand-Made Rustic Spaghetti”