Cooking from Scratch
Yesterday’s blueberry galette used an egg wash around the edges to make the crust brown nicely and the sugar stick. Some people will use milk, but we find that egg really works best. The downside is that you only use a little bit of an egg, leaving you with a small bowl of beaten egg. If you’re hungry, you can just cook it up into a small omelette or a bit of scrambled egg, but, if not, what to do?
Continue reading “Shaping Cavatelli”
We had such success with the shaping of pasta dough into strozzapreti that we thought we’d try our hand at another pasta shape: butterflies, or more commonly known, farfalle. You know the shape, the pasta that looks like small bow-ties. Sure, we know that you can just pick up a box of farfalle at the store for around a buck, but we figured that if we could master — or at least make a reasonable facsimile — farfalle, we’d be able to make them in whole-wheat versions, egg-less versions, typical egg pasta, or even porcini pasta. Plus, we like the shape of farfalle, which is reason enough to try our hand at making them.
We couldn’t resist making fresh pasta to go along with the walnut pesto we’d just made, but we didn’t want to have flat pasta. Sure, it all tastes the same, but sometimes the shape can make a dish more visually pleasing. Plus, shaped pasta will hold the sauce, which is what we needed for tossing with pesto. Of course, we could always make orecchiette, but we thought we’d have a bit of fun making a new shape.
Sure, you’ve seen us make flat pastas like fettuccine, but what about when you want a fancy shape? After all, flat pastas are easy, but shapes? They seem hard. And we’re sure some of them are difficult, if not impossible, to make at home without specialized equipment. Think pasta extruder. But, other shapes have been made at home for a long, long time.
Continue reading “Orecchiette”