This past weekend, I decided to break out the new additions. The plan was to make some fresh pasta with my white whole wheat flour, and some tahini ice cream. That's pretty much as far as I had gotten in the planning process before jumping right in. My friend Tony helped me kneed the dough and roll it out. We attempted two methods. For half the dough, I used a food processor with a dough blade to combine the flour, eggs, oil and salt. The other half I combined the old-fashioned way, creating a little egg volcano in the pile of flour. This latter method proved to be significantly more difficult. I broke the barrier of flour and ended up with a nice little lava flow of raw egg, headed straight for the edge of the cutting board. I found myself asking Tony questions like, "This does not look right, does it?" "How much flour do you think they mean when they say 'not all of it'?" "Hmmmm, is it supposed to do that?" Poor Tony just shrugged, and then Googled a YouTube video for me to watch, which ended up being somewhat helpful. I will say that the traditional method could be more appropriate for moderating how much flour is added to the dough. With the processor, it's pretty much an all-or-nothing. At least the egg-volcano method provides more freedom to gradually increase the flour. In the end, I don't think the two sets of dough really behaved differently. Letting the dough rest after it's been kneaded seems to be pretty important. It definitely relaxed quite a bit. We struggled with the first batch and it started to tighten up on us from overworking it. Giving it 30 minutes to re-relax made all the difference in the world.
Rolling the dough out was tons of fun. It was just like playing with Playdough. I think that I could eventually do it by myself, but it was certainly helpful to have two people to help guide the dough through and catch it on the other end. We went down to the thinnest layer for the first sheet and decided it was too thin for fettuccine, so we kept the subsequent layers at a level 2. After rolling and cutting both batches of dough, we hung the pasta on racks and let it dry while we moved on to the ice cream festivities. The ice cream turned out to be a bit tricky. It basically requires a cooked egg custard as the base. I let myself get distracted while making the first batch and it boiled, creating a tapioca-looking goo. I tossed it and tried again. The second time around the custard came out well, and immediately after taking it off the burner I added the tahini to it and beat it in. The mixture had to cool completely before being added to the ice cream maker. An ice cream maker, by the way, is an incredibly simply thing, (unless you get the super-uber-fancy kind). Basically, you pour this custard into a pre-frozen container and that container does the "freezing" of the ice cream. The machine itself just insulates the process and turns a mixing apparatus to break up the ice crystals as they form. It's surprisingly noisy. All this being said, the ice cream that came out of that little machine was pretty fantastic.
While all this ice cream business was churning in the background, I started thinking about what to put on this potentially fantastic pasta. I hadn't thought as far as sauce. After rummaging around a bit, I decided that some hand-crushed canned tomatoes would work. I rinsed them off to get the seeds and goo off, crushed them by hand, strained them, and tossed them in a deep pan with a little olive oil. I found some of the leftover cooked Italian sausage I had from earlier in the week and I added that in. I made a little well in the center of the mixture and sauteed some crushed garlic. I bloomed some saffron in warm water and added that in, as well as a splash of white wine. I let that all simmer for a while, reducing the liquid, and then I added the remaining 1/4 cup of the mascarpone cheese I had from Easter brunch. I served that over the pasta and topped it all with some Romano cheese, served with a bottle of Alta Vista 2007 Atemporal Blend. The result was pretty much heavenly and the wine paired perfectly. I'm going to hold on to that little "recipe" in my head, but I doubt I'd ever be able to replicate the magic. The pasta was extremely easy to cook and very tasty. I think that if I make it again with the white whole wheat flour, I'll set the machine to the thinnest setting. I thought the pasta was a bit dense. Everyone else seemed to prefer the thicker pasta, but as the chef, my preference rules. Everyone loved the main course and the dessert was a hit as well. The ice cream was a bit nutty and very creamy and rich. It was a bit reminiscent of halva, which is a favorite sesame-based treat of mine. I'm looking forward to all the fun of combinations. Chile pepper, gorgonzola and blueberry? Black pepper and cherry? Rooibus tea and vanilla? Avocado? Mmmmmm. The possibilities are endless!
Oh, and the shameless title of this post? I'm going to blame that one on a co-worker of mine who had a bit of elevator-induced inspiration on our way out today. Thanks Sam!
This weekend I'm attending The Chemistry of Wine which is a wine tasting benefit for the museum. It's supposed to be about the science behind wine tasting, complete with wine and food. Right up my geeky wine alley. More to come on that...
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