Speaking as someone who is learning to cook for a living, I’ve got a sad, embarrassing confession for you: I’m just not that into cooking meals at home these days. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I’m on my feet at 5AM and I’m baking biscuits by 6. Or maybe it’s an over-saturation of the senses, the intoxicating smell of pan-caramelized apples wafting up at me, and the constant bombardment of sauteed garlic, homey herbs, and savory braise smells of the creations from another cook, desensitizing my desire for good food. Whatever the cause, when the time to cook when the day’s end rolls around, I’ve been struggling to muster much enthusiasm.

I’ve come up with a counter-intuitive solution to my problem by challenging myself to only cook dinners that I’m genuinely excited about eating. They don’t have to be hard recipes or take hours to make, in fact most of them so far have been made up on the fly. They do need to be dishes I’ll look forward to eating, meals worthy of opening a moderately priced bottle of wine to enjoy midweek. To select these recipes, I pause and ask myself, as I’m heading by the store on the way home, “what am I hungry for?” And then, I make that thing. So far, it’s been a success.

The other night, I was jonesing for fresh pasta – something that I’ve practiced enough to confidently make whenever I need it, as long as I have a spare hour available for the dough to do its requisite chilling in the fridge.

I had portobellos, shiitakes, and a block of parmesan cheese, and I began to conceive of a meal that I became very excited about, indeed.

I sauteed the mushrooms in garlic, white wine, and  lemon juice, and finished them with just a dash of heavy cream, creating a mushroom-wine sauce that coated each strand of the al dente pasta, without overwhelming it.  A sprinkle of grated parmesan  added some sharp, creamy flavor, and the tender, meaty mushrooms stood up well with the pasta. A simple meal, nothing groundbreaking here, but also an exciting one for me, and that’s the most important thing when you’re cooking your way out of a slump.

Mushroom Fettuccine

I’m not going to provide exact ingredient amounts here, since so much of this recipe is suited to taste. Use this as inspiration to create your own pasta craving.

Serves 2, with leftovers

1/2 lb . shiitake, crimini, portobello, or other favorite mushrooms, sliced uniformly
fresh fettuccine pasta, either homemade (use my guide) or store-bought (enough for 2 people)
olive oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
lemon, squeezed
a glass of dry white wine (or more, to taste)
grated parmesan cheese
dash of heavy cream
salt
black pepper

Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and set aside.

In a large frying pan, heat enough olive oil to coat the pan generously, on med-low. Add the garlic and saute in the oil until it is translucent, stirring occasionally. Lower the heat if the garlic starts browning too quickly. Add the mushrooms, stirring to evenly coat them in the oil and garlic mixture. If the mushrooms seem dry or are sticking, add a little more oil. Cook for a few minutes until they become a bit limp and flexible, then add lemon juice and wine. Simmer until the mushrooms are done to your preference, add a little water  or additional wine if the liquid cooks off too fast. Stir in the heavy cream right at the end, toss the pasta into the mixture, only long enough to heat up to desired temperature. Add salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese to taste. Serve immediately.

While I do my best to keep this space relatively free of my personal angst, today was really crappy, and I need to tell someone about it. It was the kind of day where I talk to my mother on the phone three times in the span of a few hours: one call to deal with some straightforward, wedding-related business, the second where she calls me back after we get cut off (bad cell reception up north) and I regress to levels of 11th grade petulance and take all of my frustrations out on her but don’t actually tell her why I’m acting out, and a third when I call back later to apologize. In short, it’s the kind of day for which comfort foods, such as gnocchi, were invented.

You see, I’ve been doing everything that I can since we returned from California to land a bread baking job with a reputable bakery to keep me working whenever I’m not in school. That was the point of going to school for bread first – so I could get a lot of bread work in while I continue my education in pastry. It’s a niche field and sometimes its a little tough to get a gig, what with the waiting for a slot to open up, but I never dreamed it would get to be so frustrating.

I’ve spent the last month working on getting hired by two of the top bakeries in NYC. I met with the chef of the first, a small place, and there will be a job eventually, but it’s going to take some time. I got impatient and started pursuing a job at the second place, which does a larger -scale production and has many more employees, including one of my pals from bread class. I interviewed, got scheduled for a trial run, only to have it be rescheduled a number of times. Then it was cancelled. A week went by before they got back in touch with me to come in for another interview.

That’s when I became a bit miffed, because while bread-making is complicated, those on the lowest rung (my rung) of the totem pole are not expected to be rocket scientists. All I want now is to get back into bread production, so I cranked out some resume copies and headed back over to the bakery, where I proceeded to wait for 45 minutes before my 4 minute interview with the man who runs the show (and who, by the way, was not particularly busy during that 45 minutes of waiting) took place.

It was an uncomfortable four minutes. First, the he told me I should pay him for the privilege of working there. He asked me questions like, “what do you like about baking?” Which forced me to produce a cooking reality show style answer that made me want to gag. Then he grilled me about my previous career in business, which didn’t really seem relevant in the context of the job I was after. The last thing he did, and I’m not sure which is more sad – his audacity or that I actually obliged – he told me to let him feel my muscles. And, not taking the time to absorb the utter inappropriateness of the request, I removed my jacket and produced the guns. He squeezed up and down, not just one, but both of my arms, from wrist to armpit. I felt icky for the rest of the day.

I know that you need a thick skin in this industry, and now I can’t tell if I’m being too sensitive, or what. The worst part is, I want to bake bread so badly that I’ll probably end up working for this creep for free if I have to, self-respect be damned. That’s what makes me really want to cry. I can take someone being cruel and demeaning me if my work is sub-par. But this four minute interrogation had nothing to do with my skills – my trial run had been cancelled. I was still digesting what had happened, and why, exactly, it was making me feel so crappy, when my mother called. Later that day, I found out Gourmet magazine is to be cancelled – how incredibly depressing.

Ugh, that was a lot of heavy unloading, right? I’m really, truely sorry about that, and I probably just drove away half the EVK fan base. I’m going to go to the kitchen right now to roll out some of the leftover gnocchi dough from our last dinner party and make myself a nice bowl of tender, cheesy, sweet potato love. If you’re going to drown your sorrows in food, make sure it’s a good one, and these will surely cure what ails you.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Sage Brown Butter
Adapted from Bon Appetit, December 2005

This is a very large recipe, designed for making plates and plates of gnocchi as an entree. It’s such a rich dish, I can’t imagine serving or eating a whole plate of it. I made it as a dinner party appetizer and each person was satisfied with just 8 small gnocchi. The brown butter with sage is really rich and delicious, the perfect accompaniment to the very strong sweet potato flavor. Be careful not to overwork the dough, just mix the flour enough to incorporate it, otherwise your gnocchi will be rubbery. I found it helpful to wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for an hour before dividing and rolling, it made the dough a lot easier to handle. Also, be warned, this dough sticks to parchment that is not heavily floured.

Serving size: 10-12 appetizer portions, or even more

2 1-pound red-skinned sweet potatoes (yams), rinsed, patted dry,
pierced all over with fork
1 12-ounce container fresh ricotta cheese, drained in sieve 2 hours
1
cup finely grated Parmesan cheese (about 3 ounces)
2 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar
2 teaspoons plus 2 tablespoons salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
2 3/4 cups (about) all purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
6 tablespoons chopped fresh sage plus whole leaves for garnish

Line large baking sheet with parchment paper. Place sweet potatoes on
plate; microwave on high until tender, about 5 minutes per side. Cut
in half and cool. Scrape sweet potato flesh into medium bowl and mash;
transfer 3 cups to large bowl. Add ricotta cheese; blend well. Add
Parmesan cheese, brown sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, and nutmeg; mash to
blend. Mix in flour, about 1/2 cup at a time, until soft dough forms.

Turn dough out onto floured surface; divide into 6 equal pieces (you can also choose to wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour at this point).
Rolling between palms and floured work surface, form each piece into
20-inch-long rope (about 1 inch in diameter), sprinkling with flour as
needed if sticky. Cut each rope into 20 pieces. Roll each piece over
tines of fork to indent. Transfer to baking sheet.

Bring large pot of water to boil; add 2 tablespoons salt and return to
boil. Working in batches, boil gnocchi until tender, 5 to 6 minutes.
Transfer gnocchi to clean rimmed baking sheet. Cool completely. (Can
be made 4 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)

Preheat oven to 300°F. Melt butter in heavy large saucepan over
medium-high heat. Cook until butter solids are brown and have toasty
aroma, swirling pan occasionally, about 5 minutes.

Add chopped sage (mixture will bubble up). Turn off heat. Season sage
butter generously with salt and pepper.

Transfer half of sage butter to large skillet set over medium-high
heat. Add half of gnocchi. Sauté until gnocchi are heated through,
about 6 minutes. Empty skillet onto rimmed baking sheet; place in oven
to keep warm. Repeat with remaining sage butter and gnocchi.

Divide gnocchi and sauce among shallow bowls. Garnish with sage leaves.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. I’m swimming in them. And the most marvelous thing about tomato season is that much of the work has been done for you, by the farmer. In-season tomatoes are the most marvelous thing to happen to cooking, because even kitchen-phobic, “I can’t even boil water, pass the takeout menu!” types can make perfect, delicious, and colorful meals with minimal effort.

This recipe is another simple, delicious way to cook with your tomatoes right now.

You can either serve it hot, as a side dish, or as a cold salad, by allowing the orecchiette to chill before adding the other ingredients.

It’s exactly the kind of food I’ll be enjoying this week on my Sonoma Valley vacation – hence, the short, effortless recipe for the short, effortless post. Brian and I will be cooking some amazing, California cuisine in our rented tree house kitchen between kayaking, hiking, and wine touring, and I promise to share it all with you here.

Orecchiette with Fresh Mozzarella, Grape Tomatoes, and Garlic Chives
Adapted from Bon Appétit, August 2009

10 ounces orecchiette (little ear-shaped pasta; about 3 cups uncooked)

1/2 pound pea-size mozzarella or fresh mozzarella, diced

1 pound grape tomatoes or pear tomatoes in assorted colors, halved

6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar (or more, to taste)

3 tablespoons minced fresh garlic chives or regular chives

2 tablespoons minced fresh basil

salt and ground black pepper to taste

Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain; return pasta to pot. If you are going to make a salad, chill this until it is cold. If you are serving it as a pasta dish, add mozzarella; stir until cheese begins to melt, about 30 seconds. Add tomatoes and all remaining ingredients; toss to blend evenly. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

You don’t have to talk to me for very long about cooking before the conversation will come around to how I think Jamie Oliver is a genius. He is a champion of non-fussy home cooking, as illustrated by the type of recipes he creates (modern takes on classics, refreshingly free from snotty attitude) and the ingredients that he chooses. 

His book Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook is the first I consult when planning casual evening meals with friends. It stars a lot of interesting flavors that are perfect for serving family-style that are the best kinds of food for wrapping up a weekend and catching up over some wine, eeking out every last drop of leisure and avoiding the topic of the work week ahead.

I’d had my eye on this recipe for honeycomb cannelloni for a while, just waiting for an excuse to make it. I caught my chance a few weeks ago, when I had the pleasure of hosting some dear old friends for a special reunion of sorts.

It had been ages since my friend Jillian and I had seen our friend Graig, who was in town visiting from the Dominican Republic, so I decided to invite them, with their significant others, over for an early supper. Jillian and her boyfriend Chris are regular visitors of the East Village Kitchen, but it was the first time that Graig had ever stepped food in my place, since he has been living in the Dominican Republic for the past four years working as the founding principal at a school there. This particular visit was even more special because Graig brought his fiancee Alice with him, and it was very exciting to meet her for the first time.

This is a pretty serious baked pasta dish, which involves anchoring cannelloni pasta (I had a bear of a time finding cannelloni, and finally had to settle on some sort of handmade, extra large pasta tubes that I think are just jumbo ziti) in layers of a delicious vegetable sauce, sauteed spinach, and a sauce of creme fraiche and Parmesan cheese (I substituted some goat cheese for part of the creme fraiche with excellent results). I was excited about taking some really dramatic finishing results of the honeycomb pattern on top, but I was so wrapped up in entertaining, I forgot to pay much attention to the photography. You’ll have to trust me that this looks really cool and tastes absolutely amazing. 

Honeycomb Cannelloni
Adapted from Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook by Jamie Oliver

serves 6-8

For the vegetable ragu

A small handful of dried porcini

1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons olive oil

3 carrots, peeled and diced

4 sticks of celery, trimmed and finely diced

1 large red onion, peeled and finely diced

1 leek, trimmed and outer leaves discarded, finely diced

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced

5 Portobello mushrooms, finely chopped

5x 14-oz cans good-quality plum tomatoes

For the spinach

For the quick white sauce

I had a hankering for pad thai the other night and I decided that I would try to make it myself rather than ordering it from our neighborhood standby Klong or making the pilgrimage out to Queens. There are a few elements that I believe are mission critical in this dish – high tamarind to fish sauce ratio and lots of lime and peanuts are what I believe give pad thai a shot at being great. This recipe, with several tweaks, has potential.

The recipe called for fried tofu, which I opted to cut into small cubes before frying, rather than fry a large block and cut it up afterward (I did this because I did not want to waste all that oil). I also marinaded the tofu in a solution of tamarind and water for a few hours prior to frying.

Use a very firm tofu for best frying results. If you are vegetarian, double the tofu and leave off the meats.

The recipe instructs you to soak your noodles in advance, but depending on what type of rice noodles you buy, the instructions on the package might say something different (as mine did). I followed the instructions on the box that told me to boil the noodles first, and got great results.

As I mentioned before, I like a lot of peanuts in my pad thai. The fancy grocery near my work only had peanuts in the shell, but under most circumstances, you should be able to find roasted, unsalted peanuts out of shell. Chop them into fine pieces.

I forgot to buy the critical fresh bean sprouts for the recipe, so I attempted to compensate by using more slivers of fresh red pepper and fresh green onions.

I also opted not to use shrimp for this recipe, mostly because the ones at the store were not great and I didn’t want to sacrifice taste to poor quality. I did manage to score some great fresh, free-range chicken breasts.

As I mentioned before, an essential element of great pad thai is the correct ratio of tamarind to fish sauce. This recipe calls for you to make a solution of tamarind paste and water, which you must soak and strain (if you are in NYC, you can buy tamarind paste here or at any store that carries spices from Southeast Asia. You can also buy it online. The recipe also calls for 3 tablespoons of fish sauce (also available where tamarind paste is sold or in many grocery stores), which is a stinky thin liquid that packs a wallop of fish-taste and bouquet that I find can easily overpower a dish. I used only two tablespoons and still thought it was a bit too much, but you’ll need to experiment to learn where your threshold lies. I doubled the amount of lime juice, because I love lime in pad thai. Again, it’s up to you, and that is why cooking Thai food is so liberating!

Pad Thai
Adapted from Simply Thai Cooking by Wandee Young

Serves 4 as a noodle course or 2 as a main course

8 oz Thai rice noodles
1/4 cup tamarind paste
1/4 cup warm water

4 oz skinless, boneless chicken breast
4 oz fried tofu
6 tbsp roasted unsalted peanuts
3 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp lime juice
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp chopped garlic
8 large shrimps, shelled and deveined (50 oz)
2 eggs
1 cup bean sprouts
2 stems green onion, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 tsp roasted chilies

Strips of red pepper
Fresh coriander leaves
Wedges of lime

1. Soak noodles in plenty of cold water for at least 1 hour.

2. Combine tamarind paste with a 1/4 cup warm water in a small bowl and let soak for at least 15 minutes.

3. Slice the chicken into 1/4-inch strips. If you find it difficult to cut thinly through fresh meat, leave it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes to harden slightly and then slice. Reserve.

4. Slice the fried tofu into 3/4-inch cubes. Reserve.

5. Blend or process peanuts into coarse meal. Reserve.

6. Return to your reserved tamarind paste in its water. Mash it and transfer the mud-like mixture to a strainer set into a bowl. Mash and push with a spoon, forcing liquid to strain into the bowl. Scrape off the juice that clings to the underside of the strainer. You will have about 5 tbsp of tamarind juice. Add to it the fish sauce, sugar and lime juice. Beat to thoroughly mix and reserve. Discard the solids left in the strainer.

7. Heat oil in a wok (or large frying pan) until it is just about to smoke. Add garlic and stir, letting it cook for about 30 seconds. Add chicken and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add tofu and shrimps and stir-fry for 1 more minute. Break eggs into wok and let them fry without breaking them up for 1-2 minutes.

8. While eggs cook, quickly drain the noodles and then add to wok, giving them a quick fold, stir-frying for 1 minute from the bottom up. Add reserved tamarind juice, etc. (from step #6) and continue stir-frying, mixing everything together for 1-2 minutes. Your noodles will have subsided to half their original volume and softened up to al dente.

9. Add about 2/3 of the reserved ground peanuts and stir. Add about 2/3 of the bean sprouts and all the green onion pieces. Stir-fry for 30 seconds and take off heat.

l0. Transfer noodles to a serving dish and sprinkle with roasted chilies. Top with the rest of the ground peanuts, the rest of the sprouts, some strips of red pepper and fresh coriander leaves. Stick a couple of lime wedges on the side and serve immediately.

 


In our family, the most sacred food of all is one specific type of ravioli – the one my grandmother makes at Christmas time. Making this ravioli the way my Grandmother has all her life is a labor-intensive process involving a wooden rolling pin, a heavy board, and a lot of elbow grease and time. This year I was tasked with ravioli making for Christmas, and I felt the need to really impress Grammy with my pasta skills. 

 


The only problem with the ravioli recipe is that the recipe does not actually exist. When I pressed my mother for the recipe, the phone conversation between Maine and New York went something like this: 

Me: “So, can you please send me Grammy’s ravioli filling recipe?”
Mom: “Actually, nobody has ever written it down. The only documentation we have is a VHS video we made of the process during the Reagan administration.” 
Me: “So the filling has parmigiano reggiano cheese, bread crumbs from a loaf of Italian bread… what else?
Mom: “Chicken stock, nutmeg, and egg.”
Me: “Egg? I don’t think that there is egg in there.”
Mom: “Yes, there is definitely egg.” 

Me: “And what measurements should I use?” 
Mom: “Well, it’s supposed to be sort of dense.”
Me: “So… like what, one cup of each?”
Mom: “I’m not really sure. She [Grammy] just does it by sight.”

Me: “can you ballpark it?”
Mom: “You should be able to make a ball out of it.”
Me: “A dry, firm ball or a wet, gooey ball?”
Mom: “I don’t know – she just knows when it’s right.” 
Me: “Ok, well I’ll just start messing around, I guess. But I really don’t think that there is egg.” 

 


I’ve been practicing with the pasta roller and I’ve found a practice that works great for me (see my post on making fresh pasta at home). The lucky thing about fresh pasta is, once you figure out an egg to flour ratio that works for you, the sky is the limit. So I got to work testing the right ratios for the filling.

 


I’ll spare you the gory details of my testing. The best that I came out with is 1 1/4 cups finely grated parm to 1 cup fine crumbs from a loaf of italian bread to 1 cup chicken stock, with 1 tablespoon nutmeg.

Through all of this pasta experimentation, I had the pleasure of working with the machine pictured above. 

Place a teaspoon-sized ball of filling per 1 1/2 inch square of pasta.

To hold the pasta pillows together, use a slurry to re-activate the gluten around the edges. See my post on Fresh Goat Cheese Ravioli to see more details on how to do this.

You can either cook these in simmering chicken stock right away, or freeze them between sheets of parchment for later. Either way, they are designed to be cooked in chicken stock and served immediately after.

They should cook to al dente, approximately 10 minutes, and garnished with fresh grated parmigiano reggiano cheese and a sprinkle of Italian parsley.

Grammy approved of the ravioli. I think that the praise was 90% genuine – as they were just not quite the same as the ones we have coveted year after year. The melty, savory cheese filling was perfect with its nutmeg scented goodness. You just can’t help but lose something with the outer texture when you use a roller instead of rolling them by hand. Still, I think I did OK by her. Merry Christmas all!

Italian Christmas Ravioli 
Adapted from Grammy Hall’s recipe 

1 cup finely ground italian bread crumbs, made from a dried out loaf of crusty Italian bread

1 1/4 cup finely grated parmigiano reggiano cheese, plus more for garnish

1 tablespoon grated nutmeg

2 quarts plus 1 cup chicken stock

4 cups flour

5 eggs

Handful of parsley (optional)

To make filling:

Toast or completely dehydrate italian bread pieces in the oven (you can put them in on 275 degrees, turining them occasionally until they are no longer moist at all. Use the food processor to pulverize them into very small crumbs. 

Combine crumbs, cheese, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Add chicken stock and stir with a fork.

To make ravioli pillows:

Follow these instructions to make pasta sheets.

Trim pasta into ribbons between 1 1/2 and 2 inches wide. Drop tablespoon-sized balls of the filling onto the pasta ribbons, and cut the pasta so the drops are square in the center of squares that are between 1 1/2 and 2 inches. Use water to slurry the edges of each square and press firmly to seal shut.

Put 2 quarts of chicken stock in a large pot. when the stock begins to simmer, put the ravioli in the pot and continue to simmer for 10 minutes. Plate with a ladle of stock and garnish with extra cheese and parsley (optional).

This recipe involves fresh pasta. To learn how to make fresh pasta at home, see my post on making fresh pasta at home.

Ravioli is on my top ten list of comfort foods and goat cheese is high on my superlative list of ingredients. I love how it instantly add richness and divine flavor to, well, anything that mingles with it. Recently I had purchased very disappointing goat cheese ravioli from Russo’s, our neighborhood cheese and pastisseria (so sad because Russo’s handmade buffalo mozzarella is out of this world), and I was craving the goat cheese ravioli of my dreams: creamy, melty, and delightful. This one totally delivered (do not be deceived by the underwhelming picture above – my camera skills are sadly lacking).

I poured over by cookbooks for inspiration prior to making this dish. The filling on which I decided is based on a pasta dish in Mario Batali’s The Babbo Cookbook. I was running out of time and didn’t plan ahead for the right ingredients, so I made my pasta in a different way that Mario prescribes, so that is where the similarities end. The filling contains sage, rosemary, Italian parsley, fresh goat cheese, parmigiano reggiano cheese, salt, fresh ground pepper, and nutmeg (which really adds a nice touch).

Mix the filling ingredients together and put the the fridge to chill for at least half an hour. It will help the mixture solidify when you are working with the pasta.

Speaking of pasta – remember the fresh pasta lesson? Well that is where we pick up the story. Once your filling is chilled and your dough is rolled out, trim the edges of those long pieces with a pasta cutter so everything is straight and even.

Spoon a heaping tablespoon of the filling onto the pasta, leaving an 1 1/2 inches on all sides (except the ends – leave about 3/4 inch on the ends). 

Use the pasta cutter to cut each piece evenly down the middle.

And now we have come to the panic point – the part where one asks oneself “how the heck are these ever going to stay together when BOILED?” The answer is something we all learned in elementary school art class. Remember making pinch pots? Where you’d roll out a coil of clay and then score and slurry each layer as you stacked them in order to hold them together in the kiln? Well, this isn’t much different, except sometimes you don’t even need to score (make little, shallow cuts in areas where you want to fuse the pasta together) depending on your pasta. I didn’t have to this time, but I did “slurry” (i.e. take a little bowl of water and apply water with my fingers to the areas that I was going to stick together. Just go along the edges. It will re-activate the glutens and help the pasta stick together. Panic was unnecessary! Every single one held – a better track record than some fancy frozen pastas I’ve bought at boutique stores.

Now fold the whole thing directly in half, and seal the edges. And do it for every one. And then let them sit for ten minutes, while you get about 4 quarts of water boiling in a large pot. Also, start a large saute pan on medium heat and fill it with the following: three or four chopped cloves of garlic, a glug of olive oil, a tablespoon of butter and salt and black pepper to taste. (obviously, I neglected to photograph this step – forgive me gentle readers!) Once all that is bubbling (without burning – turn it down if it is!) and the pasta has cooked in boiling water for 3-4 minutes, drain the pasta and then add it to the saute pan.

Once the pasta is coated with the sauce in the pan, add 1/2 cup dry white wine and simmer for a couple more minutes, stirring occationally. Chop some Italian parsley for garnish, remove the pasta from the heat and plate, garnish and serve immediately.

Here’s another sub-par picture that doesn’t do the ravioli justice. Maybe I should take a photography class? Trust me – make this dish!

Fresh Goat Cheese Ravioli
Inspired by Mario Batali’s recipe: Goat Cheese Tortelloni with Dried Orange and Fennel Pollen in The Babbo Cookbook

6 oz. fresh goat cheese (I recommend Coach Farm, if you have the means)

1/2 cup whole milk

1 tablespoon Italian parsley, chopped (plus more for garnish)

5 sage leaves, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/4 cup parmigiano reggiano

salt and fresh ground black pepper

Pasta dough, rolled into sheets (see Fresh Pasta post on this blog)

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup dry white wine

3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped finely

This recipe involves fresh pasta. To learn how to make fresh pasta at home, see my last post.

Sometimes we start out a recipe with the best intentions of carrying it through, only to be struck by creativity and veer far from the directions on the page. That is exactly how Jamie Oliver’s Open Stained-Glass Lasagne with Roasted Squash turned into Lauren’s Open Lasagne with Acorn Squash Puree, in all of it’s smooth, spicy, nutty deliciousness.

I started out wanting to make this recipe because it is intended to feature a beautiful homemade pasta consisting of thin sheets of lasagna rolled with fresh herbs between the doubled layers, producing a stunning stained-glass effect.  Jamie Oliver made it look so pretty, I just had to try! Only one problem, I had a senior moment at the market and completely forgot to buy the necessary herbs.

Without the beautiful pasta, the roasting didn’t seem quite right to me. I was feeling more like a silky smooth, thick squash-velvet. And I wanted it loaded with spice and flavor.  I kept Jamie’s spice recommendations…

…but opted to steam the squash and then puree it instead.

Which still was a little too thin for my liking. But that’s why cheesecloth was invented! If you have lived this long without a cheesecloth, you are really doing yourself a disservice – there are a million uses and they cost a few bucks and last for a very long time. Here I’ve quadrupled the cheesecloth and put it in a strainer with the squash over a pot to let the water drain out for approximately 20 minutes.

After the squash was drained of excess liquid, it was think and creamy, just what I was looking for.

I put it in a saucepan with 1/4 cup of vegetable stock, to add a little flavor and give it enough liquid to reheat it without burning (the liquid evaporates away) over low heat.

All that’s left to do is spoon this mixture between folds of a single strand of lasagna. For kitchen control freaks, this free-form pasta creation might be maddening, but I myself found it quite liberating (so much so that I forgot to take a picture). Garnish liberally with fresh grated Parmiggano Reggano and a drizzle of olive oil. 

Lauren’s Open Lasagne with Acorn Squash Puree
Inspired by Jamie Oliver’s recipe in Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook

Fresh lasagne strips (see recipe here)

Although I am not exactly sure when the first time I had fresh pasta was, I’m guessing that it was the first Christmas that I had teeth enough to chew it. Once a year, several days before the holiday, my grandmother would bring out her huge, heavy wooden board and a long rolling pin and the kneading, punching, pounding, slapping, and eventually, the endless hand rolling would commence, often lasting for two days – all for the moment when we would sit down to the famous first course of Christmas dinner, ravioli in homemade chicken stock.

Others in our family have tried to match my grandmother’s pasta-making skills, but none of us have succeeded in recreating the experience of biting into those tenderest of tender little pillows. We also all concluded that while the end result may be worth it, none of us had the fortitude, patience, or upper body strength to make the amount required to feed the entire family (turns out that my grandmother is superwoman encased in a tiny Italian woman’s body).  For although the process begins with the innocent whisking of eggs with a fork on a mound of flour, the process soon becomes physically taxing, with or without the pasta rolling machine.

The more the mixture integrates, the harder this gets, until you are using your fingers to work the dough.

But work the dough you must, kneading and then pounding, pushing and pulling, until sticky changes  to rough and stiff, and finally…

…the dough becomes a very smooth, very hard mound, which requires airtight wrapping and refrigeration. This will give you time to rest those sore muscles.

I’ve made pasta a few times at home now but this is the first time that I’ve ever had the luxury of using a pasta rolling machine, which became mine when my mother lost patience with pasta making and passed it on to me. I’ve never asked Grammy how she feels about pasta machines, but I’m sure she would not approve.

It saves you a lot of the pain of rolling, but it is still hand crank and a much easier process when done with two people – one person to crank, the other to guide the pasta through the machine. I was fortunate to have Brian there to help me with the cranking and photography.

After you refrigerate your dough for at least one hour, you remove it from the fridge and cut it into inch thick slices, which you should try to flatten a bit with your fingers before feeding them into the machine. The first time through, the machine should be set to it’s largest setting. If you have no machine, no worries, with some elbow grease and a rolling pin (of uniform diameter, not tapered) you can achieve the desired results, just like Grammy.

The dough going through the first couple times will look sad – full of holes and weak. Just put it back together as best you can, and double the dough back over on itself and run it through again.

After running it through doubled once on the largest setting, reduce the size to 5 (assuming you are on a 1 to 10 scale). The machine will help shape it into the right width, but it’s ok if it’s not perfect. It will get smoother and more silky each time.

Retune the machine down to your desired thickness and run it through a final time. Your pasta sheets will be firm and resilient. Try to lay them out flat – this was a challenge for me due to size limitations in the East Village Kitchen.

But there you have it. Actual homemade pasta, destined for two beautiful dishes – which will be revealed in my next two posts!

Fresh Pasta Recipe

5 cups flour (if you can get your hands on type 00, this is the best to use – it’s a bit finer. Otherwise, all-purpose works fine)

6 eggs (free-range is ideal)