Seaweed Pasta #2 with dried wakame

I made pasta with fresh seaweed recently, but it wasn't a success: the wet seaweed reduced the structure of the pasta too much. This time I tried dried seaweed, like Maria Finn posted in 2014: it worked quite well, though the flavor wasn't as dramatic as I'd hoped -- something to amp up next time. The sauce we improvised was really tasty and also worth repeating.

Seaweed pasta with anchovy butter sauce, with stuffed squid

This makes enough for two dinners for two people as a substantial side. We froze half of the pasta so we can make a quick dinner later. 

100 g Flour

100 g Semolina Flour

  2   Eggs (103 g without shells)

 20 g Wakame dried Seaweed

I pulverized the Dried Wakame in a coffee/spice grinder and passed it through a sieve because I didn't want large chunks to absorb water and interfere with the structure of the pasta; it gave me about 3 Tbs of powder.

The pasta is made fairly conventionally: whisk Flours, add pulverized Wakame, make a well, then whisk in eggs. 

When it gets too stiff, knead on a counter to bring it all together. 
I had to add a few drops of water to make it workable and collect all the flour. 
Wrap in film and refrigerate a couple hours or overnight to hydrate.

It turned out pretty stiff and I didn't need to add flour to run it through the Atlas pasta roller/cutter; it was a little too dry and threatened to crack, but worked well enough. 

Dust the rolled sheets and cut into fettuccini, let rest on cloth while assembling a sauce.

I wanted to feature the fishiness so I made a simple but rich sauce, but you could use anything you like; this amount was enough for the half-portion of pasta made above.

 25 g Anchovies from a jar, minced

 55 g Butter, softened

  7 g Parsley, minced

1/4   Preserved Lemon (home made), minced

Use a fork to mush the Anchovies with the Butter, Parsley,  and Lemon.

Boil the Pasta until al dente, drain.

Add the Sauce to the hot pot, then the Pasta, and gently toss to coat.

We served this with Squid stuffed with Shrimp that our grocery store made (living in Barcelona has its perks!).

The Pasta texture was great, it never threaten to fall apart like the one with fresh seawead: the Wakame didn't absorb water like I feared.  

I failed to pay attention to its flavor before saucing (sorry!) but the combination with the buttery/fishy sauce was great.

Next time: Amp up the seaweed taste with twice the Wakame; add a bit more of water to make the dough more pliable. Back out the butter just a bit in the sauce, maybe 50 g. Higher quality, more flavorful anchovies would be better, now that we know the sauce works well.

That sauce really is good, it could go on almost anything: baked potatoes, vegetables, fish, even good toast. I hope I can get a pasta with enough seaweed intensity to do it justice! 

Cannelloni of Chicken Mousse (2007)

Based on Roberto Donna's class at Galileo 2003-02-09. In class this was "cannelloni of chicken and duck liver mousse with fava beans in a sauce of chanterelle mushrooms".  I made this several times to get the flavor (light and dark meat and liver) and texture right (ice, cream, egg). I've stuffed it into pasta colored with chlorophyll, steamed to cook, and topped with a little spicy red sauce. Ten ounces of pasta made 14 thin (Atlas #7) 5x6 inch cannelloni sheets. I've also filled Chard leaves, as below.  And I've made a similar filling with salmon: 12 ounce Salmon, 3 Egg White, 3 ounce Cream.

Serves 4

8    ounce  Chicken white meat, chilled

8    ounce  Chicken dark meat, chilled

4    ounce  Chicken Liver, chilled

4     Egg Whites (6 ounces by weight)

2    tsp    Salt

1    tsp    Black Pepper, ground fine

3/8  cup    Cream (3 fluid ounce)

Process Chicken meat; you might want to add an ice cube or two to keep it cool and loosen it a bit but that will soften the texture so you might have to cut back on the cream later.

While processing, add Egg Whites, Salt, Pepper and process.

And Liver and continue processing until very smooth.

Add Cream or process, but do not overwork or you'll create butter. 

The final texture should be almost like a pudding, it will firm up on cooking.

For Pasta:

2 Cup Durum Flour, 2 Tbs Chlorophyll, 2-3 whole Eggs, 1 Tbs Milk.

Roll out into sheets you can see your hand through (thinnest setting on my on

my Atlas, #7).  Mine are 5-6" wide and I cut the sheets into 5x6" rectangles.

Drop each sheet into salted boiling water about 30 seconds; it will swell in

all dimensions.  Remove with a spider and drop in ice water to stop the

cooking; remove and drain both sides on dish towel.

Pipe the chicken filling near long edge of each sheet and roll the sheet along the shorter dimension.

Place parchment on the bottom of the steamer to prevent sticking, steam until the chicken and pasta/chard is cooked, 10 minutes.

For Chard wrappers:

We had giant leaves in the garden and had to blanch them so they wouldn't crack when rolling; shocking in ice water was not needed.

Dollop about 2 Tbs filling near one end, spread over 2/3 of the length of the leaves and roll jelly-roll style; this gives a better texture -- a crunchy lightness -- than rolling like the cannelloni pasta above.

Don't wrap too tight as the filling will expand during cooking.

Place a raw chard leaf on the bottom of the steamer to prevent sticking,  steam until the chicken and pasta/chard is cooked, 10 minutes.

This is almost finger food but the veins in were a bit too chewy to bite through cleanly.

What other leaves work? cabbage seems good, maybe collards; spinach would be too much work, basil out of the question.

Green Chlorophyll Pasta (2004)

Extract chlrophyll using Thomas Keller's technique documented elsewhere: grind, soak, strain off course material, simmer to separate, filter for chlorophyll; takes 2 days.

The Chlorophyll keeps the pasta green after boiling.

The Eggs give it elasticity, critical for stuffed pasta.

The Milk, per Marcella Hazan, helps it seal for stuffed pasta; it also seems to make it a bit more tender.

We should really be weighting the Flour and measuring the Eggs by volume.

3 Tbs Chlorophyll

2 C Flour, durum (hard), fine texture

3 Eggs

1 tsp Salt

1 Tbs Milk

Combine ingredients in bowl of stand mixer.

Knead with dough hook until it begins to come together.

Finish kneading by hand on counter, adjusting texture with additional water or flour as needed.

Wrap in cling film and refrigerate overnight, or freeze for future use (flatten out so it thaws quicker).

Knead and form in hand-crank pasta machine.

For stuffed pasta, roll until you can see your hand through it;

On my old Atlas, this is the thinnest setting (#7)

though I think it used to get thinner -- it may be out of adjustment.

Chlorophyll Extraction for Green Pasta and Sauces (2004)

I did this back in September 2004 but wanted to document it here, it worked really well. The different greens had different extraction rates and flavors: basil tasted the best but was most expensive, chard was cheap and easy to extract. See another recipe here for using the chlorophyll to make green pasta which retains its flavor when cooked.

This extraction technique is from Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook. Keller uses two parts spinach and one part each parsley and watercress and uses it in herb sauces and cream sauces.

Note: this takes two days to make.

Below are various yields for different Greens, deveined or destemmed.

Weights are after washing, still a bit dripping wet.

The Chard had the best yield and was easiest to extract.

The Basil chlorophyll had a surprising pepper taste, with some anise.

Greens      Source  Pulp   Chloro   Notes

Swiss Chard 12 oz   2 C    5oz/9Tb  Good separation, fast filtering

Sorrel      1 Lb   2 C    1oz/3Tb  Fine grain difficult to tell separation;

                                    filtering is very slow

Basil      6 oz   5 floz 1oz/3Tb  Brown run-off water

Grind greens in a meat grinder (Kitchenaid mixer attachment with fine cutter).

Add at least four times as much water as ground greens by volume.

Let soak in refrigerator overnight.

Strain through medium mesh sieve, squeezing out as much liquid as possible,

allowing chlorophyll-laden water to pass through into pan (a shiny rather than dark pan is easier to see).

Bring to simmer, stirring constantly; watch for chlorophyll to precipitate out of solution.

When fully separated, shock by adding just enough ice to cool it down, but not so many there are floating ice cubes in the pan.

Strain through coffee filter set inside a colander; this may take overnight, so you can set it up in the fridge.

What's left on the filter is pure chlorophyll which can be scraped off and saved tightly covered in the freezer.

For Pasta, we use 3 Tbs chlorophyll to 2 C fine durum Flour, 3 Eggs, 1 Tbs milk.

Next time... In 2023, I no longer have a meat grinder; would whizzing the greens with some of the water in a food processor or blender work? I expect it would have the same effect of breaking the leaves to open up the cells.

Gâteau Basque #2

I made Gâteau Basque once before with an unusual technique that required piping the base and top in a spiral; it was a nuisance but I see Spanish Sabores does it the same way. This time, I want to avoid that fuss and make a more standard pastry top and bottom, like NY Times (paywall) and Serious Eats do; like Serious Eats, I'll fill with both jam and pastry cream; I've got an excess of marmalade so I'll use that instead of traditional black cherry. Here in Barcelona, I don't have my old stand mixer, so I'll make the pastry by hand, as shown in this traditional preparation video which I found on the Fête du Gâteau Basque official site, and also this video with clear quantities and technique. I'm starting from the Serious Eats recipe, including their Pastry Cream.

When I made this, I let the Pastry butter warm up, and was not able to get the sandy texture -- it congealed. But I chilled it and reworked a bit later, and it still turned out well.  My cake pan has a 20 cm (8 inch) interior with 4 cm steep sides, and 24 cm across at the top. The quantities of Pastry and fillings below worked well for this. The Almond "flour" is actually very finely ground almonds, not as fine as wheat flour. 

Pastry

250 g      Flour

 50 g      Almond "Flour"

150 g      Sugar

  4 g      Baking Powder [I had only 3.2g]

pinch      Salt

210 g      Butter, unsalted, cold, cut into 1cm cubes

  1 large  Egg (50g [mine was 59 g]), cool

In a large bowl, whisk Flour, Almond Flour, Baking Powder, Salt, and Sugar.

Mix in half the cubed Butter, and rub the butter into the flour; add the rest of the Butter, and continue rubbing in to get a sandy texture; see the video for clear technique.

Add 1 Egg, and again mix by hand, then knead into a smooth ball; it should be soft and sticky.

Divide in two portions, one slightly larger than the other for the bottom; shape into flat disks, wrap each in plastic wrap, and refrigerate 3 hours or overnight.

Pastry Cream

455 g      Whole Milk

           Orange Zest from one Orange (microplane)

115 g      Sugar

 30 g      Cornstarch

pinch      Salt

  4        Egg Yolks (70g)

 30 g      Butter, unsalted, cold, cut into 1cm cubes

2.5 ml     Vanilla Extract (1/2 tsp)

Infuse Orange Zest in Milk by combining in a pot, bring to bare simmer, then cover and steep for 30 minutes. Because this is hot, you'll need to temper the egg mixture.

Make an ice bath to chill the Pastry Cream and set aside.

In heatproof bowl, whisk the Sugar, Cornstarch, Salt; whisk in Egg Yolks until smooth, pale yellow, and fluffy -- about 1 minute.

My Infused Milk threatened to separate so I blitzed with a stick blender.
Slowly whisk the warm Infused Milk into the Egg mixture to temper it.

Return to sauce pan, cook over medium heat while whisking continuously until it begins to thicken (at 80C), about 5 minutes. 

Continue whisking, pausing every few seconds to check for bubbles; when they appear, set a timer and whisk continuously for 1 minute; this neutralizes starch-dissolving egg proteins.

Off heat, whisk in butter until melted and thoroughly combined.

Strain through fine sieve into heat proof bowl; I skipped this as I want the fine zest in my filling.

Put film directly on surface to prevent skinning, and transfer to an ice bath  to chill 30 minutes, then refrigerate until cold, about 2 hours or overnight.

Whisk in the Almond (Vanilla) Extract.

Whisking eggs into sugar

Assembly, Baking

200 g      Marmalade, room temperate to ease spreading

  1 large  Egg (50g) for wash

 15 ml     Milk for wash

Preheat oven to 180C (350F).

Grease 20 cm (8 inch) cake pan with butter and hold in refrigerator.

Whisk the Pastry Cream with an electric whisk, egg beaters, or regular whisk to fluff it up.

Remove dough disks from fridge; you'll need to let them warm up for 15-30 minutes so you can roll out the dough.

Spread film or parchment on a counter, then place the larger dough disk it, and cover with film or parchment; roll it out to 28 cm -- enough to cover bottom and sides of cake pan. 

Store covered in film/parchment in fridge while you work on the next one.

Repeat rolling out the smaller disk for the top, rolling to 24 cm between film/parchment; store in fridge.

Remove the larger disk and transfer to greased cake pan, gently pressing into corners, and running it up the sides.

Add Marmalade and smooth out.

Add Pastry Cream and spread evenly on top of the jam.

Remove smaller disk from fridge and transfer to cake pan to cover the filling.

My filling did not come up to the top of the pan, so I pressed the edges of the top to the bottom where it ran up the sides, then folded it over to the center to seal.

Whisk 1 Egg with the 15 ml Milk and brush top.

Use tines of fork to create a traditional diagonal crosshatch pattern.

Use a knife to cut a few small air vents along the crosshatch lines.

Bake 45 minutes at 180C (350F) until cake is puffed and deep golden brown

Let cool completely, about 2 hours.

Loosen edges with a knife, invert, then invert again onto serving platter.

Slice and serve.

Marmalade on bottom, left side; lots of pastry cream on top, crumbly cake-y top

Next Time...

I'll use cold butter for the pastry, as I've corrected in the instructions above.

The bottom is a little wet; can I warm up the jam and spread it on top of the pastry cream?

Bacalao Pil Pil sous vide: streamlined without oil in the bag

We've been making Bacalao Pil Pil in the US for years, and now that we're living in Barcelona, we have easy access to quality Bacalao. We hit upon a couple YouTube videos that streamline our sous vide technique by eliminating the oil from the sous vide bag when cooking the fish so we don't need to separate it from the fish liquid. We've made two variations that are very promising; we're zeroing in on a streamlined technique with terrific results.

There are multiple attempts in this post, scan down to find the latest findings and techniques. Sadly, I didn't take photos for most of these.

Streamlining: no oil in the sous vide bag

This first video (predating my sous vide technique) was done in 2015 and is cooked at 65C for 30 minutes, using the same strainer-in-skillet technique I used to create an emulsion from the exuded fish liquid. In the next, from 2020, the chef cooks at 48C for 20-30 minutes without oil, then drains off the fish elixir and emulsifies it quickly with a stick blender, then adds the oil. He cooks the garlic in oil in a jar in the same bath as the fish, so he doesn't even need a sauté pan. The last, from 2021, cooks at 60C for 20 minutes, again without oil. She too drains off the elixir into a cup and creates the emulsion with a stick blender, adding in the garlic-oil to build the sauce.

The temperatures above are 48C, 60C, and 65C; I think 48C (118F) is too low for "cooked" fish, but want to avoid overcooking it, so we'll pick a middling 55C (131F). Times ranged from 20 to 30 minutes, and we'll go with the higher end to make sure our relatively thick loin cuts are cooked through.

Both are portions for two, but the first is a bit meager since you lose some weight to the fish liquid.

First Try: too garlicky

250 g      Bacalao lomo, cut into 2 pieces for serving
  2 clove  Garlic, sliced thin
 80 ml     Extra Virgin Olive Oil

De-salt the Bacalao by washing the salt off, and putting in a bowl of water. Change it twice a day for two days, then once again the morning you're going to cook.

I bagged the Bacalao (without the frozen olive oil I used to use) and cooked sous vide 30 minutes at 55C / 131F. I put the Garlic and Oil in a ziptop bag and put it in the bath as well to infuse the oil and cook the garlic (or not!).

As expected, the fish liquid was easy to pour into the cup of a stick blender; I kept the fish warm in its bag in the bath.

I added the Garlic from the Oil bag and blitzed with with a stick blender. After it turned creamy white, I drizzled in the Oil. I think I added some Salt and that was too much. It didn't thicken as much as I'd like but had a light cream texture like I'd seen in the videos.

Plate the fish, top with the sauce.

Oh, my! That garlic was pretty raw, way too hot and unpleasant even for me; it was also too salty. Clearly, the garlic cannot cook enough in a 55C bag in 30 minutes, let alone the 48C bath the chef used. I would have preferred the sauce a bit thicker, but not as thick as the mayonnaise consistency I'd been making in the US. 

I kept the excess sauce in a baggie in the fridge for a few days for another attempt.

Second Try: tamed garlic, bacalao al punto de sal

I used some frozen Bacalao al Punto de Sal; this is fresh cod that's been brined with "just enough salt", then frozen. It's handy if you haven't planned ahead for the real thing.

360 g  Bacalao al punto de sal, frozen
       Leftover sauce from previous batch with too much garlic and salt

I divided the Bacalao between two bags, sealed, and cooked them sous vide -- again at 55C for 30 minutes. 

The pil pil sauce from the previous batch had gelled in the fridge, probably from the protein or collagen in the fish elixir. To tame the garlic, I cooked it in a small sauce pan on low, whisking occasionally; the texture seemed to stay the same. After a while, I turned up the heat to medium and let it bubble just a bit, and whisked again -- wow, it quickly developed a delightful light mousse-y texture.

I plated and sauced. As expected, this fresh-frozen cod did not have the intriguing funk of salt-cured Bacalao, and the texture seemed a little mushy compared to the real thing.

The sauce was a terrific texture, light and fluffy, not like thin cream nor thick mayonnaise: really great. The garlic had been tamed as desired: still assertive but very edible. It was still too salty but we can fix that next time.

We didn't use the liquid that was exuded from this fish because we didn't need it. I noticed it didn't seem to be a cloudy suspension like salt-cured bacalao provides, but more a separate clear liquid with flecks of white protein mixed through. It also did not turn to gel in the fridge like the salt-cured elixir. I suspect it will not make a creamy emulsion when blended, but it's worth a try.

What we learned, improvements for next time

Garlic cannot be cooked sufficiently in our sous vide temperatures and times. Next time, cook the garlic in oil in a sauce pan on low while the bacalao is in the bath; when cooked (but not browned), remove the garlic and save it to build the emulsion with the fish liquid. Keep the oil warm for the pil pil sauce.

If blitzing the elixir with garlic and drizzling in the oil doesn't make as thick a pil pil sauce as you'd like, heat it in a pan on medium and fluff with a manual whisk. Hold the fish in the bath its bag so it stays warm for service.  Don't add salt to the pil pil sauce, it'll have plenty from the fish.

2024-01-23 Pil Pil Espuma

This version learns from the above and is the simplest yet. However, I used an electric whisk to create the Pil Pil and it fluffed up into an espuma (foam) that was almost identical to whipped egg whites in texture; it was fun and unusual, but too fluffy to be a proper sauce. I think there may other interesting applications, but this veers too far from tradition -- Basque grandmothers would be spinning in their graves if they saw it.  

Pil Pil was an espuma rather than a sauce; served with fried polenta

300 g      Bacalao loin, cut in two pieces

 80 ml     Olive Oil

  2 clove  Garlic, lightly smashed, peeled

Hydrate the Bacalao and desalt over 2-3 days in water, changed daily.

Put the fish in a sous vide bag and seal on "wet" setting so it doesn't squeeze the fish.

Cook sous vide 30 minutes at 55C.

Meanwhile, heat the Garlic in the Oil on very low to extract flavor without browning garlic much.

When the time is up, drain the fish liquid into a stick blender jar; hold the fish in the bag in the hot sous vide bath for service.

Add the Garlic to the blender jar and whip with an electric whisk: it will froth up like a meringue; while whipping, drizzle in the infused Oil -- ours turned became a fluffy espuma rather than a sauce.

Plate the fish and top with the espuma sauce.

Next time, try using the regular stick blender blade rather than the whisk to discourage rabid foaming.

Use a larger weight of fish, this was a bit meager. 

2024-03-25 Blend instead of whisk

I buy a large high-quality Bacalao loin when they're on sale: they keep a long time in the fridge. I cut a 640 g piece in half for this, but the resulting 325 g piece was enough for two people with a large side dish. The pil pil was not an espuma this time, it was creamy after I thickened it a bit over heat.

Bacalao Pil Pil and Black Garlic, with sautéed Artichokes

325 g      Bacalao loin, cut into two serving pieces

 80 ml     Olive Oil

  2 clove  Garlic, peeled, sliced

  2 clove  Black Garlic, sliced, for garnish

Rehydrate, bag, and cook the Bacalao 30 minutes at 55C.

Heat the Garlic in Oil on very low.

Extract the liquid and blend with the Garlic using a stick blender.

Drizzle in the Oil and continue blending.

Mine was a little thinner than I liked so I heated in the pot use for the Oil, whipping with a hand whisk, until it thicken.

Plate the Bacalao, top with the Pil Pil, garnish with Black Garlic.

I had extra Pil Pil which I put in the fridge. The next day, it firmed up like a mousse and was quite tasty. It made for a fine topping on earthy bread topped with smoked salmon, and I'll use it on Arroz Negro tonight.

Bacallà a 65 amb crema de pequillos (Perelló)

We had this for lunch  at Perelló, a bacalao vendor and excellent cafe in Mercat Ninot. I assumed the bacalao was cooked sous vide at 65C, and then served on a smooth puree of pequillo peppers. My attempt to recreate it at home was disappointing: the pequillo sauce was fine but the fish was too salty, and not at all tender and flaking. I may have under-desalted it (causing the centers to stay stiff), or I may have overcooked it (the fish exuded a lot more white liquid than I expected).  I need to try it again and adjust my technique, because I've done similar sous vide preps for Bacalao Pil Pil and they've come out very well.

For the sauce, I would normally use garlic and oil, but I had left over oil from my super garlicky Toum sauce that I wanted to use up.

A light serving for 2.

250 g Bacalao loin, skin on

225 g drained Pequillo Peppers from a jar

 10 g Extra Virgin Olive Oil

 25 g Toum Oil

  5 g Salt

Cut the Bacalao loin into 2 pieces for serving and de-salt it in a bowl of water for two nights, changing every day.

Dry and put in a sous vide bag and seal.

Cook sous vide for 45 minutes at 65C.

While that's cooking, combine Pequillo Peppers, Oils, and Salt in a vessel and blitz with a stick blender until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Drain and reserve the white liquid from the Bacalao bag; this should contain protein sufficient to make a Pil Pil sauce when blended with oil.

I seared the skin of the Bacalao portions with a Searzall torch, but don't think this added much; it's not something Perelló did.

Spread some Pequillo sauce on a plate, top with Bacalao.

We served with pan fried potatoes.

Garnish with parsley.

Seaweed Pasta #1

I've been wanting to try adding seaweed to my fresh pasta for a while -- I hoped it would give it a flavor of the ocean and be an interesting color, even if not as intense as my squid ink pasta. This wasn't a big success, and I'll explain why, but I'll try again with a variation.

Seaweed pasta, reduced fish/cream sauce, caviar

The beautiful Mercat de Sant Antoni is a short walk from our place, and vendor Giro sells exotic fruits and vegetables including fresh seaweed. We got a package of mixed seaweeds in light and dark green and an attractive burgundy color.

I soaked it for a bit to remove the salt, then squeezed out all the moisture I could, and blotted with a dish towel (just like you would for spinach), giving me about 125 g of damp seaweed. This wouldn't mix into the pasta as is, so I blended it; it needed some liquid for the blender, so I added the eggs from my normal pasta dough recipe and blended as best as I could.  Then I made the pasta as normal, but had to incorporate a lot more flour to accommodate the additional mass and liquid of the seaweed -- it was a bit of a fuss, actually, to get it to come together. 

125 g Seaweed that's been rinsed and squeezed dried

125 g Eggs (2 XL eggs out of their shells)

100 g Flour

100 g Semolina

 25 g Flour to knead in for consistency

Blend the Seaweed with the Eggs until it's as smooth as possible; I feared that large chunks will break the structure of the pasta so wanted to break it down.

Put the 100 g Flour and Semolina in a bowl and add the blended Seaweed.

Stir and combine with a spatula, then move to a floured counter to knead; I had to add the additional 25 g Flour because the dough was too wet. Knead until fairly smooth, then cover in plastic wrap and let hydrate in the fridge for a few hours. 

This much pasta was enough for two 2-person servings so I cut it in half for our dinner.

Roll and cut into fettuccini with a pasta roller. I usually go down to a size 7 for fettuccini, but stopped at 6 for this because I was concerned about the seaweed breaking the structure of the pasta.

Bring salted water to boil and cook until barely done.

We made a sauce with Irene's fish stock, reduced down to concentrate, then added cream, and reduced further. This didn't thicken quite as much as we wanted, but it tasted great -- rich and full of fishy flavor. We plated the pasta, drizzled the sauce, then topped with a bit of caviar.

The sauce was tasty but the pasta didn't have the flavor of the sea we hoped to get from the seaweed; it certainly wasn't as dramatic -- or rewarding -- as my squid ink pasta.

I froze half the pasta for another night, as I usually do, and this damaged the texture of the pasta when rolling and cooking. I think the freezing broke the cells of the seaweed and caused it to break down, so my pasta turned out ragged. Many vegetables break down when their internal moisture freezes, expands, and explodes the cell walls, so this isn't too surprising -- just disappointing. I've made pasta with chlorophyll and it did not have this structural problem, but that's a lot more difficult to make.

Working with the fresh seaweed was difficult, but I'd try this again with dried seaweed. The only post I found that incorporated seaweed into pasta used dried wakame, kombu, and sea palm, and cautioned that "nori is not the right color and texture". I really like wakame but know that it expands greatly when hydrated, so I'm concerned it might break the pasta.  I plan to pulverize the dried seaweeds in a blender and mix with the flours and eggs. I'm hoping this won't require the addition of so much extra flour, and provide a more intense flavor.