Filed under: Recipes | Tags: comfort food, easy, italian, pasta, vegetarian
When I have four cooking magazines on my desk with at least twenty dogeared pages, it seems silly to open the recipe box and make a dish for a second or third time. The dishes I make on a regular basis lend themselves to improvisation: pizza, stir fry, soup. This Arrabbiata Sauce is one exception to the rule. The reason I make it over and over is because it tastes good, I have most of the ingredients in my cabinet, and, as the name suggests, it’s quick. Oh yeah, and it tastes one hundred percent better than the stuff in a jar (even the top shelf stuff).
The first time I made this recipe, I lived in a studio apartment behind the L tracks in Chicago. Glenn was making the long, wintry trek from school to my apartment and I was determined to have a hot meal waiting for him when he arrived. I didn’t realize that it would take me half the time to make this pasta as it would for him to travel from Ukrainian Village to Edgewater. I also didn’t realize that you could cover and simmer pasta sauce almost indefinitely. So we didn’t sit down to the hot meal that I planned, but it was tasty enough to try again. And again. And again.
I was a little worried that the dish would have lost its charm after so many years and so many fancier recipes. Not at all. And, as you can see, this dish was served piping hot. It fogged up my lens so much that I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the ghost waiting for his dinner.
It’s good to have a long Saturday project. One that takes a lot of time and has a lot of different tasks and has a lot of breaks. A project to schedule your naps around. A project that will take much longer to prepare than it will to enjoy. Because, really, that’s the fun part.
These ravioli were one big, huge Saturday project. So many fun aspects: peeling, mashing, kneading, rolling. My favorite part? Cracking the eggs into a well (right on the counter! no bowl!). It took Glenn and I about four hours to prepare and about fifteen minutes to eat. In the end, the taste was a little disappointing (an odd combination of too rich and too bland — it think we didn’t use enough contrasting flavors), but it was nice to sit down to a meal prepared entirely from scratch.
We used The Joy of Cooking for the pasta dough and an old Bon Appetit recipe for the filling and sauce. We added a little goat cheese at the end, which was a nice compliment to earthy flavors.
Fresh Egg Pasta
- 3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
- 5 large eggs
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp olive oil
- Measure the flour onto a clean counter, shape into a mound, and form a well in the center. Add the eggs, salt, and oil to the well. Use a fork to whisk the eggs, gradually incorporating some flour as you go. Use your fingers to mix the eggs into the flour until a smooth dough forms. Knead the dough until it is satiny and elastic. Divide into four balls, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let rest about an hour.
- Working with one ball of dough at a time, roll it out on your counter with a rolling pin. When the dough is as thin as you can get it with the rolling pin, stretch it with your hands. The Joy of Cooking has excellent instructions and diagrams, but I’ll try to explain a little bit of the technique. Lay the rolling pin across the dough and pick up the dough on the opposite side of the rolling pin. You can stretch it by laying it over the pin and holding it to the pin as you roll outward. You can also stretch it by using the pin to hold the rest of the dough down while you use your hands to stretch the dough away from you. In the end, you want the dough to be so thin that you can see your hand through it. Remember — pasta cooks up.
- To make ravioli, you will place the filling on one half of the dough, fold the dough over, seal the edges, and cut the pieces apart. On one half of the rolled out dough, place teaspoons of filling with 1-2 inches in between. Dip your fingers in a bowl of water and wet the dough between the drops of filling. Then fold the plain side of the dough over the filling side of the dough and use your fingers to seal the area around each drop of filling. Then use a pizza cutter to cut the individual ravioli apart.
- Spread the ravioli on a baking sheet, cover loosely in plastic wrap, and let rest one hour.
- Boil ravioli in a large pot of water for about three minutes.
As far as I can tell, everyone has had an early and unseasonably cold fall. At least that seems to be the Facebook consensus from friends in Michigan, Missouri, New York, Oregon, and Texas. We’ve had a bit of a sunny break here in North Carolina, but last week it was cold and rainy. That’s why, when I saw this on Bittman’s blog, I had to make it. Immediately.
Glenn and I had a good, old fashioned, Midwestern style, Italian dinner. Meaty ragu, garlic bread, salad, red wine. And when I say ragu, I don’t mean the brand. I mean an equally easy, but much tastier, red sauce with meat. I was a little skeptical of a milk-based pasta sauce, but it was perfectly rich and creamy. We’re not winning any gold medals for nutrition here, but it was an elegant way to load up on carbs. Now I’m ready to hibernate.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, my meal rotation goes something like this: recipe from Gourmet, salad, recipe from Smitten Kitchen, pasta, pizza, salad. Maybe it’s a little boring to keep posting the same meals over and over, but I think it’s important. I think it’s important not to hide the fact that I make some really boring stuff sometimes. I also think it’s important to share ideas about how to make the boring stuff less boring. So here is a pasta, a salad, and a pizza made with last week’s leftovers.
Angel hair pasta with mushrooms and asparagus. This would have felt more like a meal if I had made the pasta with mushrooms and served the asparagus on the side.
Greek-style Cobb salad. Did you know there are ivory bell peppers? They are slightly less sweet than green peppers. Is there even any lettuce under there? Somewhere.
Homemade pizza using Joy of Cooking crust. As it turns out, it’s pretty important to let the crust rise a few minutes before you top it. Also, preheat your baking stone or sheet — it makes the crust nice and crispy on the bottom. Roll the dough onto parchment paper or a baking sheet dusted with cornmeal for easy transfer.
In searching for some easy weekday meals, I came across this recipe on Smitten Kitchen. It doesn’t get much easier than this — boil pasta and asparagus in a pot together, drain, toss with cheese and herbs, serve. Unlike the Shrimp and Pearls, this tasted put-together and gourmet. Next time — and there will be a next time — I’ll make it with wheat pasta.
