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.

 


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

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)