handmade pasta

orecchiette (strascnat, handmade pasta)

| Simona

strascnat / orecchiette Bari / IMG_3770

strascnat (orecchiette) with crescenza cheese

Orecchiette literally means “small ears” (orecchie means ears in Italian). To make them, small pieces of dough are drawn across the wooden board with a blunt-tipped knife, or are stretched and turned inside out on a fingertip.

The latter method is the one I showed in my previous posts on orecchiette.1 A video of a woman from Bari making strascnat (the name used in that city for orecchiette)2 revealed to me the beauty of the former method. As the woman interviewed in this article3 (in Italian) says: “the women of Bari use the knife, the women ‘from the villages’ use their thumb.”

The dialectal word strascnat is sometimes written strascenate, sometimes strascinate. All these words come from the verb trascinare, which means to drag or draw and refers to the action of drawing the piece of dough across the wooden board to shape it. (Strascinati on this blog are a different kind of pasta, but as I have said a number of times, names of pasta shapes are rooted in local traditions and have local currency and I avoid getting hung up on them: the important thing is the shape.)

Signora Stella’s hands work quickly and precisely. I spent a good amount of time working on my technique and, while I am not as fast as signora Stella, I think my strascnat come out pretty nice. I now always use this method to make orecchiette. The short video shows my hands at work. Watch signora Stella2 and watch me: we use different techniques. I don’t make any claims about mine, beyond the fact that it works for me. 

 

You need to get a feel for how the blade thins the pasta and when it is time to release the pressure. If you make a mistake and an orecchietta comes out with a hole or otherwise misshapen (there is an instance of that in the video), remember that you can knead the dough and try again.

strascnat / orecchiette Bari / IMG_3349

strascnat (orecchiette) with tomato sauce

The current selection of our Cook the Books Club is A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White, a novel about finding our place in the world, about belonging, love and loss, through the intersecting stories of two main characters plus people connected to them. I enjoyed reading the book and found the characters all interesting and well portrayed.

Food plays an important role in the novel, which revolves in part around a restaurant in New York City. Except for the bread mentioned in a few places, none of the dishes described inspired me (challah made with delayed fermentation4 has been part of my repertoire for years). Then I thought: if I were to work in a restaurant kitchen and could decide what to put on the menu, like Bobby does in the novel, what would I do? The answer came easily: handmade pasta—known shapes, like orecchiette, lesser known ones, plus shapes I invented.

strascnat / orecchiette Bari / IMG_4296

my strascnat posing for the camera

The strascnat in the photo above were made with 50% semolina flour milled by Capay Mills6 from Rancho Llano Seco’s durum wheat (which I bought at the Temescal farmers’ market in Oakland) and 50% store-bought semolina flour.

Print-friendly version of briciole’s recipe for orecchiette (strascnat)

Ingredients for the pasta dough (I recommend weighing both flour and water because the quantities involved are small):

  • 100 g / 3.5 ounces semolina flour of good quality
  • A pinch of salt
  • 50 g / 1.75 ounces warm water

Note: if using 50 g Capay Mills semolina flour and 50 g “regular” semolina flour, increase the amount of water to 55 g / 2 ounces.

Ingredients for the cheese dressing:

  • 1/2 tablespoon / 7 g butter
  • 50 g / 1.75 ounces Crescenza cheese cut into small pieces

How to make the dough and shape strascnat
Make a dough with the ingredients and knead until nice and smooth. [This post (with video) talks about how to make semolina pasta dough] Let it rest, well covered (e.g., in a small ziplock bag or wrapped in plastic film), for 30 minutes or so.

Working on the kneading board, roll the dough into a thick salami and cut it into 5-6 pieces. Keep them covered while you shape the strascnat. Roll each piece into a pencil-size snake (3/8 inch / 1 cm thick), then place it so that it is perpendicular to your body. Cut a 3/8 inch / 1 cm long piece and draw it across the board with a blunt-tipped knife with a smooth blade thinning the dough and curling it into a little dome. Repeat.

As you shape the pasta, lay it out to dry on a lightly floured section of the kneading board (or a baking sheet lined with a cotton kitchen towel). Repeat until you have used up the prepared dough.

Cook the strascnat and dress as you like. The following cheese sauce is just a suggestion. 

How to cook and dress the strascnat
Bring a small pot of water to a rolling boil, add some coarse salt, stir and then toss the pasta in it. The time needed to cook it is a bit variable, depending on how dry it is, but it is not long.

In the meantime, melt the butter in a skillet on gentle heat, then add the cheese and stir while it softens. You want to time this so that the cheese is just melted by the time the pasta is ready to join it.

Taste and stop the cooking when the pasta is ready. Pour a glass of cold water in the pot, stir and drain leaving a little bit of the cooking water clinging to the strascnat. Drop the pasta into the skillet with the melted cheese. Stir well over medium-low heat for half a minute or so, until the pasta is coated with the cheese. Plate and serve immediately.

The recipe makes two small portions (served as Italian first course), but it can be easily doubled.

Other suggestions:

strascinate / orecchiette / IMG_3893

strascnat with almond-hazelnut pesto6

A reminder that there is a page on the blog where you can browse the complete collection of handmade pasta shapes, some of them of my own creation.

1 1) orecchiette with tomato sauce; 2) burnt wheat orecchiette; 3) chickpea flour orecchiette
2 Video of signora Stella making strascnat
3 Article on orecchiette baresi
4 My post on challah
5 Capay Mills
6 Recipe from The Four Seasons of Pasta by Nancy Harmon Jenkins and Sara Jenkins, reviewed in this post

CtBThis is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by Debra of Eliot’s Eats. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)

The roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

orecchiette

or launch the orecchiette audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

pasta, semolina flour, Italian cuisine

recipe: orecchiette (strascnat, handmade pasta)

| Simona

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crozets

| Simona
crozets / IMG_4200

done with cutting crozets

For me, the current selection of our Cook the Books Club, The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard Morais, was a movie before it was a novel. Ten minutes into it, I started fidgeting. Five minutes later, my husband and I agreed it was not worth watching further. Nothing happened in that quarter of an hour to make us wonder what would happen next.

With that history, I approached the book with caution and was pleasantly surprised. It is much better than the movie, at least until the midpoint: the story, the characters (particularly the protagonist's mother) and the descriptions are interesting and enjoyable. At the scene in the chapel my suspension of disbelief shattered, then the novel became another story of apprenticeship in the kitchen.

The book has a lot of dishes in it, but what intrigued me was the location of the French village where the protagonist's family moves, the Jura, so I did some research on French mountain cuisine and read about crozets, a type of pasta typical of Savoie (which is south of Jura) traditionally made "from wheat flour, buckwheat or a mixture of both."1 

dough for crozets / IMG_4197

pretty speckled dough

The dry version of this pasta can be purchased in boxes. It comes in three varieties: plain, with buckwheat flour and with mushrooms.2 Differently from pizzoccheri, the famous pasta made with buckwheat flour (farina di grano saraceno) typical of Valtellina (Italy), crozets contain eggs. Also, the crozet dough I made has less buckwheat flour than the dough I make for pizzoccheri. I followed the ratio of 2 parts wheat flour to 1 part buckwheat flour that Clotilde Dusoulier has in her recipe for Buckwheat Pasta Dough3 and, as usual, I made a small batch, using one egg (un uovo di pasta).

As you can see from the photo, the dough was quite pretty, of a pastel yellow and speckled, thanks to stone-ground buckwheat flour. Traditionally this pasta is used to make gratins and I was planning to do something along those lines, but an unwelcome cold requiring chicken soup therapy for my husband sent the crozets into hot chicken broth. My version of crozets combined the richness of egg with the rustic texture of stone-ground buckwheat flour. They were a great company to the pieces of chicken that enriched the soup.

Printer-friendly version of briciole's recipe for Crozets

Ingredients for the pasta dough:

  • 55 g all-purpose flour, plus more, as needed, to obtain a firm dough
  • 25 g buckwheat flour, possibly stone-ground
  • A pinch of salt
  • one 55 g egg, possibly from pastured poultry

Ingredients for the soup:

  • 3 cups / 700  ml chicken4 or vegetable broth, homemade or, if store-bought, organic
  • 1 batch crozets
  • 7 ounces / 200 g cooked chicken, diced
  • Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (optional)

Make crozets
On the working surface or in a bowl, create a well with the flours and salt and crack the egg directly into it. Scramble the egg with a fork. Draw flour from the sides of the well into the center, mixing well with the egg.

Trade the fork for your fingertips. Draw flour until a soft dough forms. If you started in a bowl, empty it on the working surface and scrape its side and bottom well.

Starts kneading the dough: push the dough away from you with their heel of your hand (given the small size of the dough, one hand will be enough), then with the help of the other hand gather it back toward you folding it on itself and turning it 90 degrees. Add a bit more flour (5 grams or so) to obtain a soft, non-sticky dough. Continue kneading in the same way.

Knead the dough until it is smooth, 8-10 minutes. Let the dough rest for an hour or so (at least half an hour), well covered (e.g., in a small ziplock bag or wrapped in plastic film) so it doesn't dry out.

Cut the dough into 2 equal pieces, flatten both with a rolling pin and then roll by hand or with a pasta machine. This is a fairly thick pasta, so I stop at the last but two notch of my pasta machine. Sprinkle the dough with all-purpose flour as needed to prevent sticking.

Sprinkle the dough with a bit of all-purpose flour, then cut each piece into 1/4-inch / 6 mm wide strips (basically, tagliatelle) with the machine attachment or by hand. In the latter case, fold a 3-inch strip of pasta lengthwise away from you. Continue folding the strip until the entire pasta sheet is folded into a flattened roll. With a sharp knife, cut across the flattened roll. Immediately unfold the cut strips, then line them up and cut them across into 1/4-inch / 6 mm wide squares. (I do this with my bench scraper rather than a knife.)

cutting crozets / IMG_4198

cutting crozets

Sprinkle the crozets with flour and run your fingers through them (see top photo) to ensure that they are well separated and don't stick together.

Continue until you cut all the dough, kneading and rolling again cutouts as needed.

Make the soup
Bring the broth to a boil in a saucepan and add the crozets. Cook until tender (the time needed depends on how dry they are). In the meantime, if the chicken is cold, warm it up in the microwave. Once the pasta is cooked, add the chicken to the soup and stir. Take the saucepan off the heat.

Ladle the soup into bowls and optionally sprinkle a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano on it. Serve immediately.

Serves 2-4

chicken soup with crozets / IMG_4206

comforting

Thanks to the book, I went on a journey of discovery and am pleased to have found crozets. (I suspect you will read more about this pasta soon.)

1 A Savory Savoie Tradition: Crozets
2 Crozets — A Savoie Pasta
3 Buckwheat Pasta Dough recipe in Clotilde Dusoulier's The French Market Cookbook
4 My post on my chicken stock/broth

CtBThis is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by Deb of Kahakai Kitchen. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)

The roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

crozets

or launch the crozets audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

pasta, soup, buckwheat flour, chicken, French cuisine

 

semolina pasta dough / impasto per pasta di semola

| Simona

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano]

initial phase of making pasta dough / IMG_4064

initial phase (i.e., before kneading the dough)

Recipes for handmade pasta usually instruct you to make a well in the flour and put the liquid (water or eggs) in it, then use a fork or your fingers to mix the two and finally use your hands to knead. But pasta recipes usually instruct you to make a large batch of dough, which I do not recommend when you are learning. This post shows how I make a small batch of pasta dough using semolina flour and water. (The process is almost the same when I make egg pasta, but since there are a few differences, I will devote to it a separate post.)

This short video shows my hands kneading the dough:

 

Print-friendly version of briciole’s recipe for Semolina pasta dough

Ingredients:

  • 100 g / 3.5 ounces semolina flour of good quality
  • A pinch of salt
  • 50 g / 1.75 ounces warm water

In a small bowl, weigh the flour, add the salt, then weigh the water. I recommend weighing both flour and water because the quantities involved are small. Using volume to measure the ingredients may lead to a significant error and if you are not familiar with how the dough feels, it would be difficult to correct it.

With a fork, spread the somewhat recalcitrant water through the flour. When there is no more free water, drop the fork in favor of your fingers, then use your hands. As you work the crumbly mix, you will see and feel it come together into a cohesive whole. The graininess persists for a while.

Empty the bowl onto your working surface, scraping well the bottom and side. Besides the shaggy dough, there will be some free flour. Start kneading the dough: push the dough away from you with their heel of your hand (given the small size of the dough, one hand will be enough), then with the help of the other hand gather it back toward you folding it on itself and turning it 90 degrees (see the video above). Incorporate all the semolina flour.

Continue kneading the dough in the same way. You will see and feel the graininess give way to smoothness. You don’t need to flour your working surface, as the dough will not stick to it.

Knead the dough until it is smooth and firm, 8-10 minutes. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes or so, well-covered (e.g., in a small ziplock bag or wrapped in plastic film) so it doesn’t dry out.

Follow the chosen recipe to shape the dough.

For suggestions, visit the page on my blog where you can browse the complete collection of handmade pasta shapes, some of them of my own creation, a good number of them with accompanying video.

pasta, semolina, pasta dough, Italian cuisine

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Newrule

impasto per pasta di semola

fase iniziale della preparazione dell'impasto per pasta di semola / IMG_4064

fase iniziale (prima di cominciare ad impastare con le mani)

Le ricette per la pasta fatta a mano di solito dicono di disporre la farina a fontana e di versare al centro il liquido (acqua o uova), poi usare una forchetta o le dita per mescolare e infine le mani per impastare. Tali ricette di solito danno le dosi per fare una quantità di impasto piuttosto grossa, cosa che sconsiglio quando si sta imparando. In questo post vi mostro come faccio una piccola quantità di impasto con semola e acqua. (Quando faccio la pasta all’uovo seguo un procedimento quasi identico, ma ci sono alcune differenze importanti, per cui dedicherò ad esso un altro post.)

Questo breve video mostra le mie mani che impastano:

 

Ingredienti:

  • 100 g semola di grano duro
  • Un pizzico di sale
  • 50 g acqua calda

In una ciotola pesare la semola, aggiungere il sale e pesare l’acqua.

Con una forchetta mescolare gli ingredienti e quando non c’è più acqua libera, abbandonare la forchetta a favore delle vostre dite a poi delle mani. Man mano che lo lavorate, vedrete e sentirete l’impasto diventare coeso. Ancora per un po’ rimane granelloso.

Vuotare la ciotola sulla spianatoia, raschiando bene le pareti e il fondo. Oltre all’impasto mezzo formato ci sarà ancora un po’ di semola libera. Cominciate ad impastare: spingere l’impasto con la base della mano in modo da allontanarlo da voi (data la piccola quantità di impasto una mano è sufficiente), poi con l’aiuto dell’altra mano piegarlo su se stesso e riportarlo verso di voi, al contempo ruotandolo 90 gradi (vedi il video in alto). 

Continuate ad impastare allo stesso modo. Sentirete che l’impasto diventa man mano più liscio. Non c’è bisogno di infarinare il piano di lavoro, dal momento che l’impasto non è appiccicoso.

Continuate fino a quando l’impasto è bello liscio, 8-10 minuti. Coprire l’impasto in modo che non si asciughi (per esempio avvolgendolo con della pellicola) e farlo riposare per una mezz’ora, poi riprendetelo e procedete a formare la pasta secondo le istruzioni della ricetta che avete scelto.

Per suggerimenti, visitate la pagina sul mio blog sono elencate le mei ricette per pasta fatta a mano, alcune di mia creazione e molte corredate da un video di dimostrazione.

recipe: semolina pasta dough

| Simona

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cocoa tagliatelle with ricotta, raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce / tagliatelle al cacao con ricotta, salsa di lamponi e salsa di cioccolato

| Simona
cocoa tagliatelle with ricotta raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce / IMG_3530

pasta for dessert

Author Patricia V. Davis is writing a trilogy set on the Queen Mary1, the retired ocean liner moored in the harbor of Long Beach, CA. In anticipation of the first book of The Secret Spice Cafe Trilogy2, titled Cooking for Ghosts and Lost Lovers, Patricia has launched a contest that runs until August 15. The idea is to prepare a personal interpretation of one of two dishes that appear in the book: Cristiano's Spiced Shrimp Rohini or Angela's Raspberry Chocolate Truffle Tarts.

I thought about various ways of deconstructing the dessert and created this recipe. If I were the pastry chef at the Secret Spice Cafe, this would be my raspberry chocolate specialty, something rather surprising — though knowing that I am Italian, the guests would understand.

cocoa pasta dough / IMG_3518

cocoa pasta dough

The dessert is composed of four elements:

  • cocoa tagliatelle
  • ricotta, which I make at home3
  • raspberry coulis
  • chocolate sauce

Printer-friendly version of briciole's recipe for Cocoa tagliatelle with ricotta raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce

The recipe makes two portions.

Ingredients for the cocoa pasta:

  • 1 tablespoon / 7 g unsweetened cocoa (cacao amaro)
  • 80 g all-purpose flour + more as needed
  • 1 large egg (no less than 2.2 ounces / 62 g)

Ingredients for the raspberry coulis (see Note #1 below):

  • 12 ounces / 340 g fresh raspberries
  • 1 tablespoon / 12 g ultra-fine or granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon / 5 ml fresh lemon juice

Ingredients for the chocolate sauce (see Note #2 below):

  • 75 ml heavy whipping cream
  • 50 ml non-fat milk
  • 3 tablespoons / 1 1/2 ounces / 42 g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
  • 4 ounces / 115 g good quality chocolate 70%, finely chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon / 2.5 ml vanilla extract
  • 1/16 teaspoon fine sea salt

Additionally:

  • 70 g / 2 1/2 ounces fresh ricotta, possibly homemade

Important: I listed the ingredients and provided the instructions following the order of the recipe name. However, both the raspberry coulis and the chocolate sauce can be prepared before the pasta and refrigerated until ready to use.

Note #1: these quantities make more than necessary for the pasta and you can halve them. My thought is that, since you are going through the effort of straining the puréed raspberries to obtain a smooth sauce, you may as well make a nice batch. You will certainly find ways of using it.

Note #2: these quantities make more than necessary for the pasta. However, the sauce keeps in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 weeks and you can find ways of using it within that time. This chocolate sauce was derived from a recipe by David Lebovitz4.

How to make the cocoa tagliatelle
Weigh the flour and cocoa in a bowl and stir them with a metal whisk until the cocoa is well dispersed, then add the egg and mix into a cohesive dough, first with a fork and then with your hands.

Empty the bowl onto a kneading board (scraping the container well) and start kneading the dough with your hands.

Add a bit more flour if needed to obtain a dough that is not sticky, but should not feel hard when kneaded. Knead for 8-10 minutes, folding the dough on itself towards you and pushing it away from you with the heels of your hands in a fluid motion that should feel relaxed and meditative. Cover well (e.g., wrapped in plastic film), and let rest for about an hour.

Cut the dough into 2 equal pieces, flatten both with a rolling pin and then roll with a pasta machine until you are down to the last but one notch. Sprinkle the dough with all-purpose flour as needed to prevent sticking.

Let the rolled dough rest for a short while. Sprinkle the dough with a bit of all-purpose flour, then cut each piece into tagliatelle (long strips that are 1/4-inch / 6 mm wide) with the machine attachment or by hand. In the latter case, fold a 3-inch strip of pasta lengthwise away from you. Continue to fold the strip until the entire pasta sheet is folded into a flattened roll. With a sharp knife, cut across the flattened roll. Immediately unfold the cut tagliatelle.

Lay out the tagliatelle in such a way that they don’t stick to each other until you are ready to cook them.

How to make the raspberry coulis
Place raspberries in a bowl and add and sugar. Stir well and let sit for half an hour or so. Process the raspberries briefly with an immersion blender. Press through a fine-mesh strainer, using a spatula to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard seeds.

In a saucepan, bring raspberry sauce to a simmer and maintain for 8 minutes or so to reduce it. Remove from the heat, let cool a bit, then add the lemon juice and stir well.

Can be prepared in advance, and, once cooled, refrigerated in a lidded container.

How to make the chocolate sauce
In a small saucepan, warm up the cream, milk and butter until the fluid begins to steam.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate, vanilla, and salt, stirring until the chocolate is melted and the sauce is smooth. It will take a little while, so be patient and keep stirring. The chocolate aroma will make this a pleasant task.

Can be prepared in advance. Once the sauce reaches room temperature, pour it in a glass jar, place the lid on and store in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 weeks. Warm up the amount of the sauce you need by putting it in a jar or ramekin and placing it in a pan of very hot water.

How to cook and dress the cocoa tagliatelle
Bring a small pot of water to a rolling boil. Since the pasta takes only a short time to cook, prepare the sauces just before tossing it into the boiling water.

Place 1 1/2 tablespoons / 22.5 ml of chocolate sauce in a ramekin and gently heat until the sauce melts. I do this by heating up in a small saucepan enough water so that I can immerse the ramekin in it without having the water come up its rim. Immerse the ramekin in the water and remove the pan from the heat. Stir as the sauce melts.

Place 3 tablespoons / 45 ml of raspberry coulis in a ramekin and gently heat to lukewarm. I do this in the microwave set to defrost checking often.

Prepare the ricotta as the water comes to a boil. I like to think about this dessert as shared by a couple and given that it is eaten warm, I dress it and toss it in a serving bowl, then plate it and serve immediately. Put the ricotta in a bowl and mash it with a fork to make a cream. If it is on the dry side, add to it a teaspoon or so of the pasta cooking water.

Add some coarse salt to the boiling water, stir and then toss the tagliatelle in it. Bring water back to boiling and keep it there. The time needed to cook the tagliatelle is only a few minutes, so don’t wander away.

When the pasta is ready, remove from the heat, pour a glass of cold water in the pot, stir and then drain the pasta, leaving a bit of water clinging to it. Toss pasta and ricotta. For the presentation, arrange pasta in a nest shape, pour raspberry sauce in the center, then make a ribbon all around it with the chocolate sauce. Toss well before serving.

If you prefer, divide the ricotta into two bowls and proceed as above, but diving the ingredients between the two bowls and repeating the steps for each one.

cocoa tagliatelle with ricotta, raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce/ IMG_3527

the view from above

I enjoyed making pasta with cocoa, and you will see another version in the next post: stay tuned.

As mentioned at the beginning, this recipe was inspired by, and developed for, the recipe contest organized by Patricia V. Davis. The contest is open until August 15. Details are available on the Secret Spice Cafe's Facebook page.

1 Wikipedia: The Queen Mary
2 Cooking for Ghosts and Lost Lovers web page
3 One of the posts in which I talk about making ricotta
4 Recipe for Salted Butter Chocolate Sauce by David Lebovitz

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

tagliatelle al cacao con ricotta, salsa di lamponi e salsa di cioccolato

or launch the tagliatelle al cacao con ricotta, salsa di lamponi e salsa di cioccolato audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

cocoa pasta, noodles, ricotta, raspberries, chocolate, Italian cuisine

recipe: cocoa tagliatelle with ricotta, raspberry coulis and chocolate sauce

| Simona

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cecamariti (handmade pasta shape)

| Simona
cecamariti / handmade pasta IMG_2722

spindle-shaped, delicate cecamariti (literally, husband blinders)

No husband was hurt in the making of this pasta. Blinding here is used in the sense of dazzling. Cecare is a dialectal form of the verb accecare. Mariti is the plural of marito, husband.

In Comfort Me with Apples by Ruth Reichl, the current selection of our Cook the Books Club, there is a good amount of one person trying to dazzle another (not necessarily a husband). While reading the book, I remembered seeing an entry for cecamariti 1 in the Encyclopedia of Pasta by Oretta Zanini De Vita: it was time to learn more.

There are at least two types of pasta called cecamariti. The special characteristic of the one discussed here is that it is made with bread dough. When one thinks about it, it makes sense that, in an environment in which women made bread at home, a piece of dough would be used to make pasta.

Finding a recipe was a bit of a challenge, as those in Italian instruct you to get "500 g of bread dough", while the one in English2 uses active dry yeast. I decided to try using some of my sourdough starter (pasta madre). Later, I made the dough using instant yeast. Below I give both recipes.

The procedure I use to shape cecamariti is personal, based on Zanini De Vita's description and the drawing in her book. You can see my hands at work in the video below:

  

As usual, I recommend to start with a small amount of dough (impasto), so you can give yourself time to learn the hand movements without being overly worried about how much more dough is waiting to be processed.

cecamariti with tomato sauce / IMG_2755
ready for the fork

The pasta cooks quickly and profits, in my opinion, from a light sauce. In the photo above you see it dressed with my usual tomato sauce, but I have also made it with chèvre melted with a small amount of butter and also used it in my recipe for poulet yassa3 (Senegalese chicken).

Print-friendly version of briciole's recipe for cecamariti (handmade pasta shape)

Version 1: cecamariti using sourdough starter

Ingredients for refreshing the starter (see below for timing):

  • 1 ounce / 28 g sourdough starter
  • 2 ounces / 56 ml water at room temperature
  • 2 ounces / 56 g King Arthur Flour all-purpose flour (this is the flour I use to make bread)

Ingredients for the pasta dough

  • 1.5 ounces / 42 g prepared starter
  • 1.5 ounce / 42 ml water at room temperature
  • 1/2 ounce / 14 g stone-ground whole-wheat flour
  • 2.5 ounces / 70 g King Arthur Flour all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 g sea salt

Version 2: cecamariti using instant yeast

Ingredients for the pasta dough

  • 1.5 g / 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
  • 2 ounces / 56 g water at room temperature
  • 1/2 ounce / 14 g stone-ground whole-wheat flour
  • 3 ounces / 85 g King Arthur Flour all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 g sea salt

Ingredients for the dressing:

  • 1/3 cup / 80 ml tomato sauce made with strained roasted tomatoes (detailed in this post)
  • Freshly grated 1/2 ounce / 15 g Parmigiano-Reggiano

Note: I recommend weighing all ingredients.

Version 1: cecamariti using sourdough starter

Preparing the starter
The evening before you plan to make the pasta, when you refresh your sourdough starter, put in a small container the starter ingredients.

Cover the container and let the starter ferment in a draft-free place (in my case, the top of the refrigerator) until the following day, when you'll make the pasta dough.

How to make the dough for version 1 of cecamariti
Weigh the starter and water in a small bowl and stir to loosen the starter. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir to make a shaggy dough. Cover the bowl and let it rest for 5-10 minutes.

Empty the bowl onto a kneading board lightly floured and knead the dough until nice and smooth. Lightly dust a bit of flour on the board to prevent sticking. The final dough should be supple, not sticky.

Clean and oil the bowl. Letter fold the dough and place it in the bowl. Cover tightly and place in a draft-free place. How long it takes the dough to rise depends a lot on the room temperature. (As our house is quite cool, I usually place the bowl in the oven turn it on to proofing for a few minutes, then turn it off. If it is a sunny day, our living room becomes warm as the sun turns the corner, so I put the bowl there.) It takes several hours for the dough to be ready for the next step (in my case, usually 6). Keep this in mind and run your test so you can estimate when to mix the dough so the pasta is ready for the meal of choice. See also the timing for Version 2 below.

Version 2: cecamariti using instant yeast

How to make the dough for version 2 of cecamariti
Weigh the yeast and water in a small bowl and whisk lightly. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir to make a shaggy dough. Cover the bowl and let it rest for 5-10 minutes.

Empty the bowl onto a kneading board lightly floured and knead the dough until nice and smooth. Lightly dust a bit of flour on the board to prevent sticking. The final dough should be supple, not sticky.

Clean and oil the bowl. Letter fold the dough and place it in the bowl. Cover tightly and place in a draft-free place. How long it takes the dough to rise depends on the room temperature also in this case, but it is a shorter time, in my case usually 1 1/2 hours.

dough for cecamariti / IMG_2749

the leavened dough (made with starter) turned upside-down:
it is ready to be shaped

How to shape cecamariti using either version 1 or 2 of the dough
The dough is ready when a dimple made on the dough with your fingertip persists. Lightly flour your working surface and a wooden board where you will place the cecamariti.

The dough and the resulting pasta are delicate so use a light hand in handling them and minimize the need to move them around. I line up the cecamariti on a wooden board that I can then bring close to the cooking pot.

Working on the kneading board, roll the dough into a thick salami and cut it into 2 pieces. Keep one covered while you shape the first. Roll each piece into a snake 1/2 inch / 1.2 cm thick in diameter, then cut into 1/2 inch / 1.2 cm long pieces. As this is bread dough, hence elastic, it will tend to shorten after you stop rolling. Hence, I roll one section of the snake at a time, cut a few squares and shape them, then roll the next section and so on.

While you want the surface where the dough and the shaped cecamariti rest to be lightly floured to prevent sticking, you want the area where you are rolling the dough and shaping the cecamariti free of flour otherwise the dough will slide on it.

Place a small piece of dough under your index and middle finger. Start rolling gently and once you have a cylinder, separate the fingers so the ends start being tapered. Move to using the index and middle fingers of both hands to obtain a spindle-shaped cecamarito 2 1/2-3 inches / 6.5-7.5 cm long. Gently transfer to the floured board, making sure the cecamariti don't touch each other, or they will stick. Shape the next piece.

Repeat until you have used up the prepared dough.

When you are half-way done shaping the dough, you may want to start heating the water.

How to cook the cecamariti
Bring a small pot of water to a rolling boil. Since the pasta cooks quickly, prepare the sauce before you start cooking the pasta. In my case, I place the tomato sauce into a small skillet and warm it up over low heat. I also grate the cheese.

Add some coarse salt to the pot of boiling water, stir and then with the help of a bench scraper slide the cecamariti  in it gently but quickly. The time needed to cook them is quite short. The pasta puffs up and floats as it cooks. Taste it for doneness after one minute.

Drain the pasta using a slotted spoon and drop in the skillet with the tomato sauce. Turn up the heat to medium-low and stir delicately for about half a minute. Sprinkle half the grated cheese and stir to distribute. Remove from the heat, sprinkle the rest of the cheese and stir. Plate and serve immediately.

The recipe makes two small portions (served as Italian first course).

cecamariti ready for the plate / IMG_2753

cecamariti ready for the plate

This pasta is a pleasant surprise: tender and light, it has become an immediate household favorite. I have a preference for the one with starter, which is airier and tastier.

A reminder that there is a page on the blog where you can browse the complete collection of handmade pasta shapes, some of them of my own creation.

1 cecamariti in the Encyclopedia of Pasta by Oretta Zanini De Vita
2 recipe for cecamariti by Jenn Louis
3 recipe for poulet yassa (Senegalese chicken)

CtBThis is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by Deb of Kahakai Kitchen. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)

The roundup of the event.

Small_NFlogoThis is also my contribution to the 23rd edition of Novel Food, the literary/culinary event that Lisa of Champaign Taste and I started some time ago and that I continue to host.

The roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

cecamariti

or launch the cecamariti audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

pasta, Italian cuisine

recipe: cecamariti (handmade pasta shape)

| Simona
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panda (pasta fatta a mano) / panda (handmade pasta shape)

| Simona
panda (handmade pasta) / IMG_2571
la pastasciutta con quello che c'è

The poem by George Bradley La past'asciutta con quello che c'è is included in the anthology Sustenance and Desire: A Food Lover's Anthology of Sensuality and Humor by Bascove, which is the current selection of our Cook the Books Club. (The book included a number of inspiring pieces and I may well go back to another one or two later.)

In his poem Bradley captures perfectly my approach to pasta: I sometimes plan ahead, but often I simply create a dressing with what I have available.

Dried pasta's how a cook accommodates
the facts. No artist makes much out of his
dreams but makes the most of what there is.

[If you follow the link you can read the short poem in its entirety.]

In recent years I have largely given up dried pasta in favor of my handmade pasta: I am constantly working on some shape, so I usually have freshly made pasta available. Sometimes I don't have a set plan for the dressing and mi arrangio con quello che c'è (I make do with what I have). The result is often surprisingly good.

panda (handmade pasta) / IMG_2496

panda resting on linen napkin from La FABBRICA del LINO

Watching young giant panda Bao Bao roll in the snow in the video from the Smithsonian's National Zoo inspired me to create a pasta shape that, in Bao Bao's honor and thanks to a comment by Jennifer Fumiko Cahill, I have called panda (in Italian the word is both singular and plural).

This short video shows my hands at work:

  

As you can see from the video, each small piece of pasta is first stretched with the thumb and then curled with the index finger.  The result is a concave triangle that reminds me of a sitting panda.

The dough I used for this pasta is the semolina dough I have described before. I recently stopped at Keith Giusto Bakery Supply (Central Milling) in Petaluma (CA) and purchased some of their organic semolina flour (soon to become available also from their online store). I love it. It makes a silky dough that is a pleasure to work with.

As usual, I recommend to start with a small amount of dough, so you can give yourself time to learn the hand movements without being overly worried about how much more dough is waiting to be processed. Once the pasta is ready, you can dress it con quello che c'è (literally, with what's there). In the case shown in the top photo, what I had was a small amount of creamy bean and roasted squash spread (recipe in an upcoming post) and some of my homemade crescenza.

panda (handmade pasta) / IMG_2557
panda with a light sauce (vintage Homer Laughlin "Chanticleer" plate on La FABBRICA del LINO placemat)

Burro e parmigiano (butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano) is another good option. If you like pasta, these are two ingredients you want to make sure to always keep in your refrigerator.

FTC disclosure: I have received the linens free of charge from the manufacturer, la FABBRICA del LINO. I have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for presenting them on my blog. The experience shared and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own. 

Print-friendly version of briciole's recipe for panda (handmade pasta shape)

Ingredients for the pasta dough:

  • 100 g / 3.5 ounces semolina flour of good quality
  • 50 g / 1.75 ounces warm water
  • A pinch of salt

Ingredients for the dressing:

  • 2 tablespoons bean and roasted squash spread (recipe here)
  • 30 g / 1 ounce Crescenza cheese cut into small pieces

Note: I recommend weighing both flour and water because the quantities involved are small.

How to make the dough and shape the panda
Make a dough with the ingredients and knead until nice and smooth. [This post (with video) talks about how to make semolina pasta dough] Let it rest, well covered (e.g., wrapped in plastic film), for half an hour or so.

Working on the kneading board, roll the dough into a thick salami and cut it into 5-6 pieces. Keep them covered while you shape the panda. Roll each piece into a thin snake (3/8 inch / 1 cm thick), then cut into 3/8 inch / 1 cm long pieces. (Depending on the size of your hands, you may need to increase the dimensions a bit so your fingers can work comfortably.)

Keep some all-purpose flour in a dish on your working surface, so you can rub your thumb and index finger in it if/when the dough sticks to them. With your thumb, draw a piece of dough away from you, flattening it. With the help of your index finger, release the dough so it remains on your working surface. With your index finger, draw the piece of dough towards you with a gentle curling action. The result is a concave triangle that reminds me of a sitting panda.

Do not press hard or the dough will become too thin. With practice, you will find what is the right amount of pressure to apply to the dough. Lay the panda out on a lightly floured section of the kneading board (or a baking sheet lined with a cotton kitchen towel or, in my case, a linen placemat). Handle the shaped pasta gently so as not to without misshape it.

Repeat until you have used up the prepared dough.

Cook the panda and dress as you like. The following is just a suggestion.

How to cook the panda
Bring a small pot of water to a rolling boil, add some coarse salt, stir and then toss the panda  in it. The time needed to cook them is a bit variable, depending on the size and dryness of the pasta.

Place the bean spread in a small skillet, add a small amount of the water in which the pasta is cooking and stir to make a soft cream. Add the cheese and stir to distribute. When the pasta is almost ready, place the skillet over low heat to melt the cheese.

Taste and stop the cooking when the panda are ready. Pour a glass of cold water in the pot, stir and drain the panda. Pour a glass of cold water in the pot and stir. Drain the panda leaving a little bit of the cooking water clinging to the pasta and drop into the skillet with the sauce. Stir well over medium-low heat for about half a minute. Plate and serve immediately.

The recipe makes two small portions (served as Italian first course).

panda (handmade pasta) / IMG_2558-2
pretty in sepia

A reminder that there is a page on the blog where you can browse the complete collection of handmade pasta shapes, some of them, like the panda above, of my own creation.

CtBThis is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by Rachel of The Crispy Cook. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)

The roundup of the event.

New bww logoThe photo is my contribution to edition #156 of Black and White Wednesday – A Culinary Photography Event created by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook, now organized by Cinzia of Cindystar, and hosted until February 4 by me, Simona of briciole.

The photo was shot in color with my iPhone and then converted to sepia (Lightroom preset Sepia Tone).

The gallery of images contributed to the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

panda (pasta fatta a mano)

or launch the panda (pasta fatta a mano) audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

pasta, semolina flour, Italian cuisine