Main Meals, Recipes

Guiding The Dough, Serving The Sauce: Part One – Homemade Fettuccine

Last year, around the same time of our current cusp of autumn and winter, Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea featured pesto gnocchi as the crowning dish and theme of the month, for its wholesomeness, simplicity and deliciousness.

This year, for the months of May and June, I have decided to keep with my tradition and feature another simple rustic speciality: before breaking into the soups, stocks, pickles and desserts characteristic of the season, I have chosen pasta and passata as crowning dishes. I’ll literally be coring and kneading an ode to the winter season!

Meet flour and tomato; the raw ingredient or the Adam and Eve of the empty plate. Unlike the warmer months where the dough dries out and becomes elastic too quickly, the winter months are an ideal time for keeping warm by eating fresh pasta, for the air is sufficiently crisp and cool to make kneading, guiding and processing your dough much easier. Thus it has become a tradition for me, at the first cold snap of May, to respond by breaking the seal on a few jars of well-preserved sauce to accompany my neatly layered lasagna sheets, my delicate coils of fettuccine or silky strands of angelhair.

The initial aroma from the jar of sauce, once the air-seal is popped and the olive oil has settled from its three-month hibernation, is strong enough to blanket the house for the rest of the afternoon. Not to mention the intense flavour that lingers on your palate long after the plate of pasta. Be warned; though it sounds tempting to ‘shake’ your jar of sauce to ‘circulate’ the flavour, you will almost certainly end up with an explosive oily tomato cocktail once the lid is removed. The most effective technique for preparing your sauce for the pan is to invert the closed jar and leave it this way for a moment or two, before settling it in a basin of lukewarm water for about 15 minutes.

Whatever you do, do not settle for anything less than certified ’00′ flour for your pasta and farm-fresh eggs. This grade of flour is always triple-sifted and extremely finely ground to make it malleable and palatable when being prepared and boiled, not gluggy and sticky. Farm-fresh eggs ensure a smooth consistency and appealing colour and texture. And perhaps most importantly, ’00′ flour has wonderful bite without the excessive chew factor. In other words, you can sink your teeth into a firm and moist strand of pasta and not a clump of dense, stringy dough!

INGREDIENTS
500g ’00′ flour
4 large free-range eggs
pinch of salt and pepper
tepid water as needed

  1. Simplicity is key, so keep any additional ingredients to a minimum and exclude any moisture-adding ingredients (e.g. olive oil, sauce).
  2. Combine all ingredients (except water, which should be added gradually and as-needed) into a large mixing bowl.
  3. Add around 30mL of water to begin with. Mix in a kneading action with your fingers and roll with the palms of your hand.
  4. Continue to mix and add water as necessary. Remember – you can always hold-back on the water, but there is only so much flour that you can add.
  5. The dough should not longer be sticky but smooth and glossy. Cover with a tea-towel to sit in a draught-free place for 30 minutes.
  6. Dust a countertop and place the dough upon it. Knead with a rolling pin, with your hands and with the force of your fingers for at least another 30 minutes, until elasticity is obtained. Add extra flour if dough is too sticky.
  7. Roll out the dough with the rolling pin into the shape of a flattened soccer ball. Do not aspire for a perfect circle, this is very difficult to obtain.
  8. Roll the dough into a ball and repeat. Continue rolling-out pressure with the rolling pin until the dough is spread vertically and wafer-thin. Carefully remove it from the counter and place it into your hands.
  9. “Guide” the dough by holding one end of the dough sheet, allowing gravity to pull the pasta from one end to the other. Be gentle or the dough will split.
  10. Add extra flour to the pasta dough one last time – thoroughly, until all moisture is taken from the dough – and feed the pasta into a pasta machine.
  11. Separate and flour the end-product pasta and immediately bring to a boiling pot or carefully aligned on floured, greaseless baking paper for freezing or refrigeration.
23 May 2010   ·   2 comments

2 comments to “Guiding The Dough, Serving The Sauce: Part One – Homemade Fettuccine”.

Germaine — June 4th, 2010, 12:58 am

Yum yum….how was the pasta? Nothing beats handmade pasta. Lucky for J to have someone who can cook for her :)

I remember the Mamma Rosa used the pasta machine to roll out the cannoli pastry as well, so to ensure constant thickness. I can’t wait to see your posts on cannoli.

p.s: my herbs didn’t grow at all. My second attempt failed again. I need to try out different soils. *fingers crossed*

Matt — June 20th, 2010, 5:54 pm

Hi Germaine,

The pasta turned out lovely and firm, the “00″ type definitely proved its worth in price and quality when sampled through the taste and its ability to hold the pasta sauce so well. I haven’t tried the pasta roller for cannoli yet, though I have no excuse now not to give it a try!

I’ve been having a hard time growing the herbs from seed as well – it’s tough, don’t be disheartened, and keep in mind that this season I cheated and took prunings and small plantings and nutured these to full size. It might be a good idea to head down to a nursery and pick up some herb plants from there. Fingers crossed…

The Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea project found its roots when it was plucked excitedly from the garden, washed briskly in a basin of water and lovingly left out to dry in a soothing marinade of vision and ambition ... More »

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