So where did pasta come from exactly? Nobody knows. It could have been Italy, might have been China, was perhaps the Middle East, but then might have been someplace else altogether. Anyplace people were cultivating wheat and pounding it into flour. The thing is, boiling a paste of flour and water (like cooking it on […]
READ ONHands down the most common mistake people make when cooking pasta is failing to salt their water properly. A teaspoon or two per gallon is about the maximum for most cooks. Yet that’s not nearly enough. As a good Italian friend of mine is fond of saying: it must taste like the sea! And that […]
READ ONI have trouble making my pasta “the authentic way”. That is, mounding up my little flour volcano, dropping eggs in the center and beating them up with a fork. I always get a breach in the wall, which sends partly scrambled egg spilling out all over the place. I don’t like the mess, but even […]
READ ONHey wait a second, these taste like egg noodles! And indeed strands of homemade fettucine will if you make them from the same base material as their Swedish equivalents, which is to say soft, finely ground white flour. There’s not a thing wrong with that, of course. Standard all-purpose flour makes fantastic pasta. However to […]
READ ONIt’s said that if you want to taste cream, make panna cotta. If you want to taste butter, croissants are your bet. If you want to taste eggs, omelets. But if you want to taste grain, if you really really want to taste grain, then you can’t do any better than pasta. Breads, especially those […]
READ ONI know, it’s not pastry. And no, for those of you who remember the 80’s, I’m not planning on making any of those dessert pastas that were all the rage back then: chocolate lasagna, blueberry tortellini, raspberry ravioli with white chocolate crème Anglaise…what a nightmare all that was. Nope, this week it’ll be standard homemade […]
READ ONIt’s my new environmentally-friendly term for recycling content that’s been on the blog before. Like it? I knew you would! What does it have to do with the here and now? you may ask. What it has to do with, frankly, is that I’m getting into a new work situation, one that’s going to make […]
READ ONPlenty more requests came in over the weekend to add still more entries to the “Flour Basics” content area, especially some having to do with less traditional types of grains and flours. Like what? Well, a partial list could include wheats like spelt, kamut, emmer and einkorn to non-wheats like millet, amaranth, buckwheat, cassava, barley, […]
READ ONI’ve had numerous requests to put up some sort of table comparing American flour types with their French, German and Italian counterparts. And while I’d love to comply, I’m not sure that much real data exists on that, for all the reasons I spelled out last week. However, because there are no lengths I won’t […]
READ ONI’m out of town for a few days. Have a lovely weekend. When I get back…tarts!
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