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Here's a delicious fresh pasta you can make
from scratch that requires no special equipment.
You don't need a pasta machine. You don't
need a rolling pin. You don't even need a
kitchen, which is good, because mine is being
renovated. All you need is a bowl, and technically
you don't even need that.
I'll throw in about a cup of all-purpose flour
to start with — that's maybe 120 grams.
It does not have to be precise, but be conservative.
It's always better to start with less flour.
I'll make a little well in the center and
then crack two eggs in there. One egg's worth
of fresh pasta per person, I say. Don't worry,
vegans — I'm gonna give you options for
everything today.
You could put in maybe half a teaspoon of
salt at this stage, or you could just really
aggressively salt the cooking water later
— either way works. I'm just beating up
those eggs inside the well. Yes, that's a
plastic fork. My silverware is all packed
up and I can't find it.
When the eggs are smooth, you just gradually
start bringing some flour into it. The "well
method" for making pasta is traditionally
done right on the cutting board. But I think
unless you have a very big flat working surface,
it's much easier to do this in a big bowl.
It keeps the mess contained.
When I've done all I can with the fork, I'll
get some flour on my hands and start kneading.
Just lean the weight of your body into your
palm. We're doing this to develop the gluten
and make the pasta stretchy, and also to integrate
all of the flour that the eggs can hydrate.
The dough tells you how much flour to add.
This is still pretty sticky, so it can definitely
absorb some more. Dust a little on there and
knead.
When it seems like it's got all the flour
it can easily take in, and it's smooth and
elastic, you want to cover it up and throw
it in the fridge for about a half hour. That'll
give the flour particles time to hydrate,
and colder dough is easier to work with.
Fresh egg pasta is one of life's great pleasures,
but you can make fresh pasta with just water
and oil. Again, about a cup of flour. Without
eggs, traditionally, a lot of people would
use durum wheat flour for pasta. That'd be
good for both taste and color, but all-purpose
flour is fine too.
Maybe half a cup of water in the well — like,
120 mils. Maybe a tablespoon of olive oil
— and I can already see I didn't put in
enough liquid. I'll show you why that's bad.
Mix it with a fork until you can do no more,
then get in there with your hands. My dough
has now stopped absorbing flour, which is
fine. The dough is good, but it's not enough
dough for two people, so now I'm gonna have
to put in more water, and watch what happens
—
yeah, this is really hard to work with. It's
possible. It's gonna come back together again,
but it's gonna be a slippery mess for a while.
It is much easier to integrate flour into
a dough that starts off too wet than it is
to integrate moisture into a dough that starts
off too dry. So when making pasta dough, always
start with less flour and more liquid than
you think you'll need. But there we are, back
together again. I'll wrap that up and also
throw that into the fridge.
OK, so for my meatless but not-vegan pasta,
I'm gonna use a whole bulb of fennel. Absolutely
delicious vegetable, fennel is. Cut the stalks
off. The stalks are very fibrous — people
usually only use them in stocks and such.
I'm just gonna harvest the fronds off of them.
Those little leaves will make a beautiful
and tasty herb to finish the dish. Give those
a quick chop, or a tear — not too fine,
or they'll just turn into dust.
For the bulb, I'll just slice it very thin.
Up there at the top, the slices will naturally
fall apart into semicircles, which is the
final shape that I want. Once you get down
closer to the root end you might start to
get full circles, so I'll cut it in half and
then resume slicing. Beautiful. Fennel bulb
has that anise flavor that a lot of people
don't like, but it's very mild. My wife doesn't
like anise, and yet she liked this dish a
lot.
Also gonna peel and chop up some garlic — I'll
do half a head for two portions.
Water goes on the boil. LOTS of salt if you
didn't put salt in your dough. A little salt
if you did.
And here's my egg dough. You might be tempted
to throw some flour on there before you start
working with it, just to keep it from sticking,
but don't. Watch what happens. The first thing
we want is to roll this out into a snake,
and flour makes that a lot harder to do. You
want it to be sticky at this stage.
Without flour, the dough sticks to the board
and your hands, thus providing the friction
that forces its expansion outward. That's
OK though, even if you've made this mistake
— just pull the dough into a long, straight
shape however you can. Now, before you start
cutting is when you'd want to add flour liberally.
Here's another mistake – don't just chop
through them. If you leave them sitting next
to each other like that, they're all gonna
immediately stick together again. You'll have
to pull them apart one by one and toss them
in the flour. Again, that's a mistake you
can recover from, but the better thing is
to cut and then kick the pasta away with your
knife. Cut and kick, Cut and kick. I'm just
cutting these to thin little pieces — about
as thin as I can easily cut them. Any thinner
and the dough would just schmoosh under the
knife.
Get all those pieces tossed in flour, and
then one-by-one, we're just gonna press them
— I'm using my thumb. I'm just looking to
flatten it out but I still like to have a
slightly raised edge around the outside for
textural contrast. That happens naturally
if you just press into the center of each
noodle.
This is basically a very crude orecchiette
I'm making here. Real orecchiette usually
doesn't have eggs, and they take some technique
to shape — these take absolutely no skill
at all, and I think they taste just as delicious.
Let's call them legate ears. There you go
— lovely fresh pasta with no equipment
or talent required.
I usually drop them into the boiling water
a handful at a time — I think that makes
them less likely to stick together into one
big ball when they drop in there.
Fresh egg pasta cooks very differently from
dried pasta. As soon as it floats to the surface
forcefully, it's cooked. It just takes a minute.
Dried pasta starts to go soft immediately
after it's cooked — fresh egg pasta does
the opposite, at least for a few minutes.
This is actually getting firmer right now,
which is how I like it. I gave this three
or four minutes. At some point it would start
breaking down and go softer, but in general,
the window of opportunity with fresh pasta
is really wide. Dried pasta is perfect for
only an instant. With fresh, you've got some
leeway about when you drain it.
I'll just stash that on my plate for a sec,
and throw some olive oil in my now-dry pan.
Might turn down the heat to medium or medium-high,
but I want it hot. When the oil is shimmering
and starting to smoke, I'll put in the fennel
bulb and sauté, stirring almost constantly.
If you hit these with some really high heat,
get some color on them, they go really sweet.
When they seem half-cooked, I'll push them
to the side, and drop some butter in the middle.
Let it melt, and then in goes the pasta.
Because these noodles are big and thick, you
can kinda treat them like dumplings and pan-fry
them a little bit. They will get a lovely
brown skin on them. Stir them constantly or
they will stick, though. Luckily, they're
big and robust enough that you won't break
them up much as you stir them. When they seem
like they're halfway to where I want them
to be, I'll throw in my garlic, and let it
fry in there for a minute. Then I'm gonna
do a big pinch of chili flakes. Heat and fennel
go beautifully together, as Italian sausage-makers
have known for generations.
I'm gonna top this with grated pecorino at
the end, but I also like to grate some into
the pan first and stir it around so that I've
got some running through everything. On the
plate it goes. Grate on some cheese. Parmesan
would be fine, too. And then top with the
fennel fronds.
This is a bigger version of my normal plates,
so what we have here is a "lover's portion"
as they say — enough for two. Look at the
browning on that noodle. Crazy delicious,
but not necessary. You could cook these however
you like. The texture of fresh egg pasta is
just to die for. Softer than dried pasta,
but yet it has this snap. I love it.
Let's do a vegan version. I'll cut some tomatoes
in half — these little ones are great for
easy pasta, and the small varieties usually
have the best taste of all out-of-season fresh
tomatoes in the grocery store. I'll chop up
some basil and I've still got half a head
of garlic chopped.
Pasta dough. Again, orecchiette traditionally
is not made with eggs anyway, but this isn't
orecchiette. It's legate ears. If we'd used
durum wheat flour, as is traditional, that
would have a more yellowish color, which I
think is nicer.
Cut and kick, cut and kick. Time spent flicking
each piece away will save the time of having
to peel the pieces apart from each other.
Rather than using my thumb this time I'm just
gonna mash with my fingertips — press down
each one. It's still naturally gonna give
me that raised lip around the edge which is
satisfying to bite into. This is obviously
a phenomenal job to do with kids. Even very
small children can smash a little lump of
dough, and many hands make light work.
A ton of salt because I did not salt the dough.
Yes, the old adage that your pasta water should
be as salty as the sea is probably technically
an overstatement. That'd be too salty for
most pastas, but for this, a thick dough with
no salt in it, I think I mean seawater literally.
Or you could just salt the dough — either
way is fine.
Boil for a couple minutes until they float
forcefully to the top. With no eggs, I prefer
to pull them right away after they float.
They can start to get a little slimy and mushy
if you cook them much longer. Drain them,
and whoops — I lost a couple.
Turn the heat down a bit. Lots of olive oil
in, and then throw in the noodles. Without
the eggs and butter, they won't brown as nice,
but you can fry them a little after you boil
out any any remaining water. Never stop stirring,
and frankly a teflon pan would be a lot easier
here. Throw in the garlic and I'll grind in
a bunch of pepper.
After the garlic has fried for a minute, I'll
throw in the tomatoes. You really want to
do that at the last minute, otherwise they'll
just disintegrate into a sauce with lots of
skin in it. I want them to make this a little
saucy but to still maintain their basic structural
integrity.
I'll toss in half my basil, just like I do
with my cheese — to have some running through
everything. On the plate it goes, top with
some more basil, raw olive oil and pepper.
Absolutely lovely, and obviously you could
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And, please, don't tell our handyman, Dwayne,
that I cooked on his drop cloths. I cleaned
them, Dwayne, I promise.
