Friday, January 18, 2008

Photo of the Week: Behold! More Pasta!

Shaking excess flour from cut pasta.

I know! Pasta! It's really just so cool! And I know you're all out there going, "Yes, Emma! I'm with you! Pasta is really just so cool!" Excellent. I knew I liked you.

This here's some spinach pasta--same basic pasta recipe with a pound of steamed spinach cuz it's pretty. And also because it's "good for growing girls and boys." We rolled it out fairly thick (Level 5 on most pasta machines), so it had a nice chew to it. And it slurped up nicely with a Gorgonzola Cream Sauce.

Tagliatelle Verdi Al Gorgonzola
(c) Roberta L. Dowling 2004, CSCA

Pasta Dough
1 lb fresh spinach, de-stemmed, steamed, squeezed dry, and chopped (I'd imagine you could also use frozen grocery store spinach here if you wanted to save your self some steaming)
3 eggs
4 cups of flour

Stir the eggs together with a fork and then stir in the spinach. Make a well in the flour and pour in the egg/spinach mixture. Gradually incorporate the flour into the egg/spinach with a fork until it comes together in a cohesive ball. (Note: You'll probably end up using more flour with this pasta because of the spinach.) Knead until smooth and let rest for a half hour. Roll out and cut into thick noodles.

Sauce
4 oz. butter
1 c. heavy cream
1 lb gorgonzola, rind removed and cut/broken into small chunks.
3/4 c. Grana Padano cheese, grated
1 pinch nutmeg
salt and pepper
chopped parsley for garnish

Melt the butter and add the cream until it simmers. Cook for a few minutes on low heat. Add the Gorgonzola and half of the Grana Padano cheese tot eh cream sauce and stir gently over low heat until thoroughly melted. Add the nutmeg and season with salt and pepper. Cook the pasta in large amount of salted, rapidly boiling water. Drain the pasta and toss with the Gorgonzola sauce. Serve with an extra sprinkle of Grana Padana and some chopped parsley.

3 comments:

Sherrie said...

Yum, yum, yum! Love the photo! I love making homeade pasta. Martha has a lovely article with ideas for using other vegs as well: http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.3a0656639de62ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=cbdc0bd7dda71110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=pasta&rsc=header_2 I haven't tried them yet, but they look delicious!

Emma Christensen said...

Thanks for the tip, Sherrieg! I've been aching to try making pasta with beets (for red pasta) and also layering herbs into the sheets--it makes a neat lacquered look! Have fun!

Angelina said...

I made spinach pasta once and I had to add a lot of extra flour because even though I squeezed as much liquid out of the spinach before using it, it was still quite wet. But the end result was pretty tasty.

These two pictures are great!