Sous Vide Short Ribs, White Bean Puree: restaurant quality on a weeknight

This turned out really well and was a minimal work over a couple evenings. Reduced red wine created a flavorful sauce and the bean puree provided a balancing base.

The photo doesn't do it justice, I only took it after I bit into it and exclaimed, "Wow, this is great!". It was rather improvised so I didn't expect such stellar results but we definitely would say this is restaurant quality. The Short Ribs came out tender and still pink, not gray and shreddy like conventionally braised ribs. Our 24-hour sous vide made it easy, and the hands-on time is minimal, but you need to plan a couple nights in advance.

Amounts below are approximate and not critical.

250 ml      Red Wine (we used the dregs of a Bota box :-)
 90 g       Onion, diced (half onion)
  4 cloves  Garlic
peels from  Whole Orange
            Black Pepper
2 sections  Beef Short Ribs, enough for 2 people

           

250 g       Large Lima beans, cooked

 30 g       Butter
100 m       Milk
  6 cloves  Garlic, poached in the Milk/Butter
  5 ml      White Pepper
            Salt
  4 sprigs  Parsley
            Lemon Zest (from one lemon)
[other ingredients in the puree]

Heat the Red Wine with Onions, Garlic, Orange Peel, Black Pepper and cook to reduce to about 200ml/1C, maybe 10 minutes.
Freeze it solid in a container so you can bag it as a solid; overnight works.

Pop the frozen sauce out, add it with the Short Ribs to a sous vide bag, vacuum  and seal.
Cook at 70C/160F for 24 hours.

Drain the bag, straining the sauce.
Let the oil separate from the sauce and separate it out; reserve.
Cook down the sauce to intensify it, 5-10 minutes; season with Salt.
Remove the bones from the Ribs and carefully separate the rubber-band-like tendons that attached them; discard them, but salvage any little nubbins of meat.
Get the pan smoking hot, and use the separated oil  to film a cast iron pan, then sear the sides of the Ribs, adding weight to the top to ensure good contact.

Meanwhile...
Poach Garlic in Butter/Milk with White Pepper to tame the fire, adjust Salt.
If Lima Beans are not hot, heat covered in microwave to serving temperature.
Puree the  Lima Beans in a food processor .
Add the hot Butter, Milk, Garlic and whiz until perfectly smooth.
Stir in Parsley and Lemon Zest for service.

To serve:
Add the Ribs nubbins to the hot Sauce to reheat.
Spread a base of the Bean Puree on a plate, top with a Rib, cover with the reduced Sauce.
Serve with an audacious red wine.

2020 August: second try, needs work

We repeated this, cooked for the same time and temperature, but it was not as unctuous. The beef was not terribly tender, certainly not "falling off the bone", or fork-splitable. The sauce was a bit meager. Not restaurant quality. What went wrong?

The beef ribs must have been somewhat different, they really did need more time or a higher temperature. I may have cooked down the wine a bit too far, not leaving enough liquid in the bag.

We should get another flat of ribs and try them, Serious Eats style, cooked at a variety of different times and temperatures to see which is best. The first time we threw this together, it was amazing, and I want to be able to recreate it reliably.

Ciceri e Tria from Flavors of Puglia

I like these stripped down dishes, "cocina povera", arising out of the food of the poor. This is from Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot, with chick peas, and a pasta made with hard semolina but no eggs. Interestingly, a portion of the pasta is fried, and together, the dish packs an intriguing textural punch.

Crunchy fried pasta, chickpeas, and normal semolina pasta textures

Irene thought this was a bit bland, but I rather liked it. Her biggest complaint was the lack of flavor in the pasta, but adding an egg like rich northerners do would be against tradition. I'd like to add some brightness and bump up the flavor contrast with other Puglian ingredients, perhaps capers (fried!) or lemon zest.

Adapted from Flavors of Puglia by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, serves 2 people.

Ingredients

1 C     Chick Peas, dry (about 3/8 pound)
1 small Onion, quartered, root removed
1 stalk Celery
1 leaf  Bay Laurel
1 Tbs   Salt (or to taste)
grinds  Black Pepper

1/3 C   Water, warm
1 tsp   Salt
1 C     Semolina (our was fine, but more coarse than typical flour)

1-2 C   Olive Oil for frying
2 clove Garlic, peeled and crushed lightly
1 small Dried Chili Pepper

Procedure

Hydrate the Chickpeas overnight.

Cover Chickpeas with about an inch of water and cook covered with Onion, Celery, Bay Leaf, Salt and Pepper for about 2 hours, until very tender; if the water drops below about 1/2 inch above the chickpeas, add more boiling water.

Simmer chickpeas covered, with onion, bay, celery

Meanwhile, make the pasta:
Dissolve the tsp Salt in the 1/3 C Water, then make a dough with it and the Semolina in a food processor.
Knead to bring together, then wrap in film and rest in the fridge an hour to hydrate.
Roll it out to #5 or #6 on an Atlas machine.
Cut it into fettucini or -- better -- 1/2 inch strips.
Lay on kitchen towel to dry while the beans cook.

Heat the Olive Oil to 350F with the Chili and Garlic.
When the Garlic turns brown remove it and the Chili; mince both and add to the Chickpea pot for flavor.
Cut 1/3 of the pasta into bits about 2-inch long and fry until golden, about 5 minutes; drain on paper towels.

Flavor the oil with garlic, chili; remove when garlic browns

Fry 1/3 of the pasta, cut into strips

While that pasta fries, cook the rest:
Add the remaining 2/3 pasta to the Chickpea pot and cook until toothsome but tender enough, about 5 minutes.
The chickpeas and pasta should throw off some starch to thicken the cooking water, and I was aiming to have little broth, just a starchy sauce-like consistency at the end.

Cook 2/3 pasta in the chickpea water, it will release starch

Serve in heated bowls, topping with the crunchy fried pasta.
Garnish with a lashing of the hot flavorful Olive Oil.

I made it again, this time frying some large dry capers and some small wet ones, and grating some lemon zest as a garnish; it made for a more interesting dish, and I'd do it again.

With fried capers and lemon zest

a cure for whatever ails you

we discovered the cocktail Penicillin at a laphroaig sponsored event last winter and now that's it's cold again our thoughts turned to a warming drink for a dark evening.  a little googling showed that i had none of the essential ingredients at hand but that's never stopped any project of mine.....here's an original recipe

https://www.thecocktailproject.com/drink-recipes/laphroaig-penicillin

• 2 parts Teacher's® Highland Cream Scotch Whisky
• 3/4 part fresh Lemon Juice
• 3/4 part Honey Syrup
• 3 pieces fresh Ginger, Sliced
• 1/4 part Laphroaig® 10 Year Old Whisky
• (optional for garnish) Candied Ginger

and here's my version, the Tetracycline

2 parts bourbon
3/4 part fresh lemon juice
3/4 part domaine de canton
1 piece crystallised ginger
1/4 part malt whisky

shake the first three ingredients vigorously on ice,  strain into a glass containing the ginger.  float the malt whisky on the surface.  serves one.

Taralli from Flavors of Puglia

These savory cookie-like things from "The Flavors of Puglia" book interested me because they use a high percentage of semolina, with wine and olive oil but no water; they're also boiled before baking, like bagels. I'm annotating the recipe with metric here.

The author, Nancy Jenkins, points out that Puglia produces a lot of hard durum wheat so they use "semola" which we refer to as "semolina".  The texture is not as fine as conventional wheat flour but what we buy is more like a sand texture, more coarse than "flour" but not as coarse as most corn meal.

You can use 1 Tbs crushed black pepper corns or 1 tsp red pepper flakes, or other flavorings as you wish. The New York Times has other variations in two different recipes.

  7 g     2 tsp  Yeast
250 ml    1 cup  Dry White Wine at 38C=100F
420 g     3 cup  Flour, All Purpose
325 g     2 cup  Flour, Semolina
125 ml  1/2 cup  Extra Virgin Olive Oil at 28C=80F
 10 g     1 tsp  Salt
 20 g     2 Tbs  Fennel seeds, crushed in mortar

Toss the yeast on the warm wine, let bloom, then mix.
Add to other ingredients.
Knead in a stand mixer with dough hook: it should come together like a stiff bread dough -- if it's too dry, like mine was, drizzle in more wine until the crumbly bits come together properly.
Form dough into ball, place in bowl and cover with film and let rise 30 minutes or more.

Pull off a golfball-sized chunk of dough and roll into a 25-cm / 12-inch snake; divide into 3 and roll into a pencil- or pen-thick snake about 15-cm / 6-inch  long.
Loop like a ribbon and press the ends to seal.
Lay on parchment or something the dough won't stick to, and do all the rest.
We had 3 cookie sheets worth of loops.
Divide dough into pieces about the , roll each into a snake the thickness of your little finger, cut into 4-inch 10-cm pieces; loop and connect the ends like a ribbon or doughnut.

Preheat oven to 190C=375F.
Bring a pot of water to boiling, drop taralli in a few at a time.
When they rise to the surface, skim out and drop onto a kitchen towel to dry.

Arrange boiled taralli on cookie sheet and bake at 190C=375F for 15-20 minutes until brown and crisp.
Remove and let cool on a wire rack where they should finish getting crisp.

These were mildly flavored of fennel seed, but I think it could be punched up a bit. Perhaps next time, saute the fennel seeds in the oil to extract more flavor.  I also think they would benefit from salting the boiling water to get a zing in each bite.

Marge's Pecan Pie

I'm usually not a sweets person, but I really liked this -- great flavor and texture. I noticed a similar recipe on the back of the Karo jar but it used only 2 Tbs butter and 1 1/2 C pecans; Marge's seems more indulgent, as it should be. The original recipe used only Dark Corn Syrup, but I preferred the taste with half Molasses and half Light Corn Syrup. 

   
  1               Pie Crust, 9-inch (pre-made or home made)
  3 large         Eggs
100 g    1/2 C    Sugar
1.5 g    1/4 tsp  Salt
 42 g      3 Tbs  Butter, melted
120 ml   1/2 C    Dark corn syrup

120 ml   1/2 C    Molasses
  5 ml     1 tsp  Vanilla extract [4 g]
110 g      1 C    Pecan Pieces, for filling [4 oz]
110 g      1 C    Pecan Halves, nice quality for top [4 oz]

Fit Pie Crust into 9" pie plate, blind bake (optional: paint with egg white to seal it)
Whisk together Eggs, Sugar, Salt, Butter, Corn Syrup, Vanilla until thoroughly blended.
Stir in Pecan Pieces. 
Pour mixture into Pie Crust.
Arrange attractive Pecan Halves on top of pie.

Bake at 175C=350F on lower rack for 40 minutes, or until pie is set, shielding edges after 15 min if needed.
Remove & cool on wire rack.
Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Filling puffed up spectacularly but settled down when it cooled 

Liqueur di Marmellata di Pompelmo

I tried making scorched orange halves in sugar over the BBQ and forgot about them, leaving the sugar to caramelize very darkly and mercilessly stick the fruit to the pan. I figured I'd dissolve it by adding vodka, and a day later they'd come free. I let them settle and the taste was great: citrusy, dark, complex, amaro-like.  It tasted like an old fashioned liqueur you'd find in Italy, so I've come to think of it as "nona's liqueur".  I've also made it, the same way, with lemon and had the same tasty results.

This time, I'm trying on the stovetop with grapefruit, measuring the quantities to see if I can reproduce it reliably.

450 g Grapefruit (1 whole), halved, sliced
100 g Sugar
750 ml Vodka, clean tasting (I used Frïs here)

Sprinkle half the Sugar in a cast iron pan.
Lay in the sliced Grapefruit.
Add the remaining Sugar.
Let sit to absorb Sugar and draw out the juice.
Heat high and cook down, and begin to caramelize the syrup.
Continue, turning Grapefruit until it gets as dark as you can stand, it will start smoking.
Take off heat and cool.
Pour on Vodka.
Let sit to dissolve baked-on caramel.
Pour into jar and let mellow until your curiosity persuades you to drink it over an ice cube.

Pomme Anna: elegant and buttery

Potatoes au gratin, scalloped potatoes, and Pommes Anna: all variations on thinly sliced potatoes cooked with plenty of rich dairy. The classic gratin has cream and cheese, the scalloped has cream but no cheese, and the Pommes Anna uses only butter. Since we were serving this with creamed spinach, I went with the cream-less Pommes Anna; they make for a stunning presentation.

Some recipes suggest a cast iron skillet and that seems smart for developing a deep crust, but ours was too big for this quantity. We used a heavy black steel pan, maybe 25cm (10 inch) diameter and it worked beautifully, and the spuds didn't even think of sticking. It needs to be oven safe since you're going to bake it hot (no Teflon: nonsticks can release toxic fumes at very high temperatures).

What the hell are "Yellow" potatoes? In the UK you see bin after bin of named varieties; in the US, they're too generic. I don't think what we used were Yukon Golds, but they weren't Russet or "Baking" potatoes either. You're looking for something not waxy and not fluffy. Next time I'd seek out the named Yukon Golds for some repeatability.

Serves 4 as a side

Pommes Anna, after inverting from the skillet

50 g (3 Tbs)   Butter, unsalted
               Black Pepper
               Salt
Pinch          Nutmeg, grated on microplane
700 g (1.5 Lb) "Yellow" Potatoes, peeled

Melt the butter and add the spices to the skillet, swirl around to coat all surfaces. Pour out into a bowl you can dip into it later.

Slice the potatoes thin, at most 1mm (1/16th inch), a mandolin is helpful here;  without rinsing (it removes the starch), layer the slices, slightly overlapping, into the buttered skillet.

Drizzle on some of the melted, seasoned Butter.

Add another layer, repeat with butter and layers until you've used up all the potatoes; I had about five layers, but 3-4 is probably fine.

Drizzle a bit more butter on top, cover with aluminum foil, add a lid to press down, and weight it down to compress a bit.

Sizzle over heat a few minutes to brown the bottom layer.

Place with foiled, weighted, covered skillet in a 220C (425F) oven for about 20 minutes to cook through.

Remove the pan, remove the weights, lid and foil, and return to oven to finish cooking, dry out and brown, about 30 minutes.

After the uncovered baking, nice and browned, and pulling away from the sides of the skillet. 

Test with fork: it should pierce easily.

Loosen if needed with thin spatula run around the side of the pan; turn out onto a plate to invert, it should look gorgeously browned with an attractive rosette pattern from the layers.

Slice carefully so as not to separate the layers, and serve.

Our layers adhered OK to each other but not as coherently as I'd like; I want something that won't separate as I'm cutting it for service. Maybe next time I'd back out the butter between the layers a bit so the starches will gel a bit more. Possibly cook longer and a bit lower with the foil off. 

Creamed Spinach: good and easy

Most of the creamed spinach recipes tell you to boil the spinach, then laboriously squeeze out the water. Or they use a roux or Béchamel sauce. Or they add creamed cheese. Nonsense: this is too much work and masks the flavors. We don't waste time nor flavor here. The spinach below sounds like a lot but it's not once it's cooked down. Serves 2 as a hearty side.

30 g (2 Tbs) Butter, unsalted
2            Scallions, diced
             Salt
             Black Pepper
1 pinch      Hot Chili flakes, if you're feeling frisky
570 g (20 z) Baby Spinach (an entire bag when we buy it)
120 ml (4 z) Heavy Cream

Saute the Shallots in Butter with the Salt, Pepper, Chili until soft.
Add the Spinach in batches; you don't even need to chop it up since it's baby spinach; cover and cook down, stir, add more Spinach, and continue until you've used all of it.
Pour in the Cream and stir well to mix.
Keep the heat on, uncovered: the Spinach will exude more liquid, and this will mix with the Cream, and you want to evaporate that and thicken everything, capturing the Spinach liquid flavor in the Cream.
Continue heating, stirring whenever you think about it, until the Spinach and Cream have reached the unctuous, moist, rich state you want -- 10-20 minutes depending on how aggressive your fire is.

Reducing the cream with the spinach

It doesn't suck with a nicely seared flank steak.

Gumbo

We've been making variations on this gumbo for years based on a recipe from chef Paul Prudhomme. The stock, proteins and even the okra can be swapped out based on your tastes and what you have on hand; the "holy trinity" of Celery, Bell Pepper, and Onion are a must. I used to make the roux in a deep pot over fierce heat, but now I used a large shallow pan and lower heat, and this made for a more relaxed preparation -- the roux darkened nicely while I was prepping the trinity of vegetables.

 120 ml Oil
 100 g  Flour
 160 g  Celery (4 stalks?), sliced
 160 g  Bell Pepper (1), diced
 170 g  Onion (1), diced
 280 g  Andouille Sausage, sliced
 170 g  Okra, sliced
  15 g  Salt
   3    Bay leaves
   2 g  White Pepper
   3 g  Black Pepper
  20 g  Garlic, minced
  15 ml Tabasco Sauce
1500 ml Stock (about 6 cups)
   4    Boiled Eggs, whole, peeled
  10    Shrimp, shelled

Heat the Oil in a large pan big enough to hold the assembled gumbo, and add the Flour. Whisk periodically and allow it to brown to a deep mahogany color -- the darker the roux is, the more flavor you'll get, so don't be timid.
While the roux is cooking, cut up the trinity of vegetables: Celery, Bell Pepper, and Onion.
In a separate pan, brown the Andouille Sausage, remove to a plate, leaving the fat in the pan;
add the Okra and saute a little in the sausage fat, remove to the sausage plate.
Add the stock to the same pot to deglaze and heat.

Once the roux is dark enough, add the trinity of Celery, Onion, Peppers and cook in the hot roux for a few minutes.
Add the seasonings: Salt, Bay, White and Black Pepper, Garlic, and Tabasco; cook a few minutes more.
Add the Stock and mix well so the roux dissolves.
Add the Sausage and Okra.
Cook for a while until the flavors marry, about 30 minutes.
Add the Boiled Eggs to heat through and color the surface.
Just before serving, add the Shrimp and cook until just done.

Serve over rice, topped with a boiled egg sliced in half to expose the yolk.

Barley Cooked like Paella

The toothsome texture of properly cooked barley is fun and appealing, but preparations are frequently bland. We tried cooking it exactly like paella and it came out great, and we even got a good socarrat crust. If fideuà is a thing, why not a barley "paella"?

The finished barley "paella"

We followed the same recipe we've been using recently to work on developing a proper crust at the bottom, the socarrat. It did take all the stock we'd normally use for Bomba rice, 5 Cups, instead of the 3 Cups you'd use to prepare barley the conventional way.

We sauteed the sofrito ingredients (shallots, peppers, tomato, garlic) in the veal fat, removed and sauteed the ham, removed then sauteed the barley a bit just like we'd do for rice.

First addition of veal stock to sautéed ingredients

We wanted an earthy flavor for the cold weather so went with veal fat instead of oil, a veal stock to cook the barley, with ham, roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts.  We added the veal stock at successive times, each time waiting for it to evaporate and build up the crust a bit. We ended up adding maybe a cup of water to finish off the barley, which took about 45 minutes to cook through sufficiently.

Add toppings: roasted peppers, artichoke hearts

The veal stock made it a bit too rich, a bit "sticky" so next time I'd probably use about 3 Cups veal stock and 2 Cups water. The barley came out with a pleasant and playful chew, almost a bounce. All the grains were distinct, like the rice in a good paella. 

Adding some water to finish cooking until toothsome

Pierogi #2: cake, all purpose flour comparison

After complaining that my previous attempt was too chewy, too tough, someone told me that Eastern European flour is softer (less protein) than our US flour. This time, we made two batches: one with just cake flour, the other with half cake, half all purpose. Both used butter, egg, and sour cream in the dough -- all will make for more tender dough. We stuffed them with mushroom/onion duxelles that we finely chopped in a food processor and cooked down.

We cooked all the pierogi identically but couldn't really tell the difference in dough texture, but I think they were more tender than the all-AP flour we did previously.

Served with sautéed onions and crunchy breadcrumbs

The recipe came from King Arthur Flour, which we use all the time; both our AP and Cake flours were KA. I like their recipe because it uses metric, which makes measuring fast.

241g King Arthur Cake Flour (for other batch, 120g Cake + 120g All-Purpose)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
113g sour cream
57g butter, melted

Combine all ingredients in food processor and pulse until it comes together.
Wrap in cling film and let rest 10 hours or so.

Roll out on a floured counter but don't flour the top or it makes it hard to seal the dough, so I used cling film on top so the rolling pin doesn't stick.

Note my super-clever rolling pin with O-Rings to give me consistent thickness

Cut out circles, and place in little pierogi / ravioli thing (white device in top right of photo), fill, and close to seal; you can fold by hand then crimp with a fork but we had the filler thing, it was cheap. We found the dough contracted a bit after cutting, making the rounds a bit small for the form; the contraction surprised us as the dough had rested a long time.

Simmer in salted water until the dough is tender and cooked; don't boil hard because it may break the soft dough.

Left is cake+AP, right is cake-only

We didn't fry these this time because we wanted to evaluate the dough alone;
next time, we will sauté in butter.
Serve with sautéed onions, and untraditional but tasty fried and seasoned breadcrumbs.

We froze the extras, and a week later, thawed them out and fried in a little butter. They were really quite good this way, much better than the floppy soft texture of the only-boiled. The skin had a slight crust and the dough was tender. This treatment redeemed the pierogi, and we'll definitely do them again this way -- boil then fry.

Pierogi lightly fried in butter, with fried shallots. Much better.

vegan chili

The Best Vegetarian Bean Chili Recipe
J. Kenji López-Alt

A 100% vegan chili recipe that has all of the deep chili flavor, textural contrast, and rib-sticking richness that the best chili should have.

Yield:Makes about 3 quarts, serving 6
Active time: 30 minutes
Total time:2 hours
Ingredients
    •    3 whole SWEET dried chilies like Costeño, New Mexico, or Choricero, stems and seeds removed
    •    2 small HOT dried chilies like Arbol or Cascabel, stems and seeds removed (optional)
    •    3 whole rich FRUITY dried chilies like Ancho, Mulatto, Negro, or Pasilla, stems and seeds removed
    •    1 quart water
    •    2 whole chipotle chilies in adobo sauce with 2 tablespoons sauce from can
    •    2 (14-ounce) cans chickpeas
    •    1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes packed in juice
    •    2 tablespoons vegetable oil
    •    1 large onion, finely diced
    •    3 cloves garlic, grated on a microplane grater
    •    1 1/2 tablespoons cumin
    •    2 teaspoons dried oregano
    •    1 tablespoon soy sauce
    •    1 teaspoon marmite or vegemite
    •    2 (14-ounce) cans dark red kidney beans, drained, liquid reserved separately
    •    2 tablespoons vodka or bourbon
    •    Kosher salt
   
NOTE:  If using presoaked and cooked dried chickpeas and beans, use 4 cups of each, filling the voids in the measure with retained cooking liquid or water.  it’s hard to gauge how much raw beans to use when the required measures are by volume of cooked product.
Directions
    1    Place dried chilies on a microwave-safe plate and microwave on high power in 10 -second increments until pliable and toasted-smelling, about 30 seconds total. Transfer to a 2-quart microwave-safe liquid measuring cup or bowl. Add water and chipotle chilies, cover with plastic wrap, and microwave on high power until gently simmering, about 5 minutes. Remove from microwave and set aside. Transfer chilies and liquid to blender and blend, starting on the lowest possible setting and gradually increasing speed to high (make sure to hold the lid down with a clean kitchen towel or a potholder to prevent it from blowing out). Blend until smooth, about 1 minute.
    2.    Drain chickpeas, reserving liquid from can. Transfer chickpeas to a food processor and pulse until just roughly chopped, about three 1-second pulses. Set aside.
    3.    Roughly squeeze tomatoes trough your fingers into approximate 1/4-inch pieces. Add to chickpea water along with any juices.
    4.    Heat oil in a large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add onions and cook, stirring frequently, until softened but not browned, about 4 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, and dried oregano and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add pureed chilies, soy sauce, and marmite and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add reserved chickpea/tomato water mixture and stir to combine. Add chopped chickpeas and kidney beans. Stir to combine.
    5.    If beans are sticking out of the top, add reserved kidney bean liquid until just barely submerged. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce to a bare simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, until thick and rich, about 1 1/2 hours, adding more reserved kidney bean liquid as necessary if chili becomes too thick or sticks to the bottom of the pan.
    6.    When cooked, add vodka or bourbon and stir to combine. Season to taste with salt. For best results, allow chili to cool and refrigerate for at least one night and up to a week. Reheat to serve.
    7.    Serve, garnished with cilantro, scallions, avocado, lime wedges, and warm tortillas as desired.

Pasta Variations: Semolina, Whole Wheat, Mix

I wanted to see how taste and texture changed depending on the wheat so I made three variations: all semolina, all whole wheat, and half of each.  Spoiler: the whole wheat was the least favorite.

For each pasta dough, I used the classic ratio of 1 whole egg to 100 g of the flour: first 100 g semolina, second 100 g whole wheat, last 50 g semolina plus 50 g whole wheat.  Whiz the egg in a food processor, while spinning add the flour, and process until it comes together in a ball.  The semolina came together quickly, and was quite wet.  The half-n-half took some more processing but came together. I had to add a couple teaspoons of water to get the whole wheat batch to come together. Shape each by and into a tight ball, cover with film, and let sit in a fridge for an hour to hydrate thoroughly.

Roll each dough ball into sheets with a  manual Mercato Pasta Machine to thickness #7 (of #9), dust with flour to prevent sticking; I had to add quite a bit of flour to the pure semolina dough to keep it from sticking. Run each sheet through the fettuccine cutter.

Whole wheat, mix, semolina

Boil each in salted water until toothsome, drain, and taste.

 

You can see the color differences; left-to-right: whole wheat, mix, semolina

The semolina pasta was light and delicate, and the egg flavor may have come through a bit.  The semolina/whole wheat was more toothsome. The pure whole wheat was more toothsome but a bit like cardboard in texture; it also reminded us in taste of everything we hate about "health food".  I preferred the combo for its body, but Irene preferred the semolina for it's delicacy. Served naked, it also became painfully obvious which was boiled in properly salted water (the mix, in this case; the others were under-salted).

You can still see the color differences, semolina's the lightest, whole wheat the darkest

We served each in separate nests, topped with a sauce we made from tomatoes, some chili, and baby octopus that had been hiding in our freezer. Not too shabby. Our favorites remained unchanged with the sauce.

Sauced with spicy baby octopus and tomato sauce