Pasta, Again, and Dates!

When I first wrote about making pasta a couple of weeks ago, I'd mentioned that I didn't like the flavor of my pasta. Last weekend, as part of an effort to make ravioli, I made pasta again, and again didn't like it. It tasted a little earthy, even a little earthy. I started to wonder if something was wrong.

I did a little research, and I also sought advice on cookingforums.net.  I identified three possible problems. First is that I was using unbleached flour. This didn't seem likely, because there isn't much of a taste difference for most people, but who knows?  My flour could have gone a little bad. I didn't like that option much, either, since I'd bought it only this spring and kept it sealed since, but I couldn't disprove it. Finally, there might be contaminants in my pasta machine - not unlikely, since it had been sitting unused on various shelves for years. I had run it though the dishwasher (a mistake apparently) but again, who knows?

Yes, I probably should have eliminated one possibility at a time, but I didn't have the patience. I figured out how to dissemble my pasta machine enough to give it a good cleaning and did so. I also bought fresh, bleached all purpose flour. Finally, I eliminated one other variable by choosing a recipe using only flour, water, salt, and a little butter.

I made my dough and set it to rest. I faked together a filling from ground chicken, salt, egg, fresh parsley, some fresh thyme I had (see below), bread crumbs, and crushed red pepper.

I rolled out my dough, more successfully than last time, and made the raviolis. I put some of the raviolis in boiling water and the rest on a baking sheet in the freezer. When those in the pot floated, I removed them and dressed them with butter and some commercial spaghetti sauce I like.

My ravioli were tasty, the pasta tasted find, and the use of the bleached flour even made them look more appetizing. 

I love the taste of victory. Also the taste of ravioli.

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We had a retirement party for a colleague on Thursday, and her boss asked me to contribute something. After looking at a bunch of recipes, I chose to make the bacon-wrapped dates from the iPad app "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman. This was harder than I anticipated. Stripping thyme leaves was not as straightforward as the instructions straightforward, the dates were sticky, and the raw bacon was (surprise!) greasy. I was a mess, and I was sure that as the fat melted during roasting the bacon would fall off the toothpicks.

In fact, it worked great. The bacon tightened up around the dates very nicely, and the thyme inside the dates was a very nice touch. They disappeared instantly at the party, all the praise a beginning cook really needs. Yay!

Remembrance of Goulash Past: Meals and Memories

As it happens, two of my very favorite food memories involve dishes called 'goulash'.

When I was a kid, I belonged to the Boy Scouts for a while, and even attended summer camp one year. On one rainy day at camp, for reasons I don't remember, I stayed back from the planned activity and instead helped the adult leaders prepare for lunch. The meal was what I then thought goulash to be, a combination of elbow macaroni, mild tomato sauce, and crumbled hamburger that had little in common with the traditional dish from Eastern Europe.

It was a great meal nonetheless. Mostly it was the circumstances: I had my portion while standing under the dining fly with the leaders before the other boys arrived, sheltered from the rain, feeling safe and accepted to a degree that was rare for me. The goulash itself was delicious and (for me, anyway) an embodiment of comfort food.

Many years later, I traveled to the borough of Queens in New York City to visit family. By this time, I was vaguely aware that there was a food called goulash that was much different than what I'd grown up with, but had no real idea what the 'real thing' might be. For my first meal in New York City, we went to a largish restaurant that felt much more like a diner than a fine dining place. When I saw 'goulash' on the specials board, I felt compelled to order it.

The dish that was served to me was tender cubes of beef, tasting strongly of what I now know as paprika, resting on a bed of egg noodles. There was a little broth, but not really enough to call a pasta sauce. I can no longer taste it in my "mind's mouth", but I found it stunningly delicious.

As i write, there's an interesting contrast that occurs. Outside the realm of cookbooks, meals are profoundly impacted by the circumstances in which we eat them. Is the meal an occasion, or are we just filling our bellies? Who, if anyone, are we with and how do we feel about them? Are we falling in love with our companion or coming to grips with love that is no longer? In the camp experience, the memories of the meal are powered by its circumstances: the food was good, but I'd eaten identical dishes many times. On the other hand, though my pleasure in the New York City goulash was enhanced by the excitement of my visit to the city, it is the food itself that I think about.

Oddly, I find myself reluctant to try making Hungarian goulash in my own kitchen. It seems impossible to make a dish of the quality of that I had in Queens, especially given that memory has likely added flavor not on the original plate. Nor could I recreate the circumstances of the scout camp goulash and the comfort that memory brings me.

A number of years ago. I (and my then non-existent cooking skills) were invited to a potluck put on by a group with a VERY culturally diverse membership. We were all invited to bring foods from our own culture that were important to us. I was stumped: I could not think of a single food, other than those everyone would already know, that fit the guideline. It was then that I first thought about this idea of the flavor added to food by a meal's circumstances. Sure, I could have made root beer floats for my friends, but I could not have made a root beer float eaten on a hot Iowa summer day when you're ten years old. That flavoring is not found in my kitchen or yours.

But goodness, that float was delicious.

Matters of Trust

I'd never have thought that trust would have such an important role in learning to cook, but I find that I've been thinking about just that.

There are cookbook authors/publishers that I trust, that I don't trust, and that I trust on some things but not on others. Once I bought a magazine - not from a big-name publisher, but they publish a lot of recipes from home cooks - and made four recipes from it in the same weekend. None of them worked. Although I know I made mistakes, I've not bought anything from them since. This may not be fair - but I just don't trust them.

There are food brands I trust and food brands I don't. This is especially important with ingredients I'm less familiar with, because I'm not going to be able to judge quality for myself.

I struggle, sometimes, with trusting a recipe even when I have every reason to do so. The other day I was following a procedure for making fried eggs, that being one of the everyday cooking skills I have yet to master. This procedure (from the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook) called for preheating the pan over low heat, adding butter, adding the eggs, and covering. About two-thirds of the way through the time designated for the doneness I wanted, I became convinced that the sounds coming from my pan didn't indicate that my eggs weren't burning to a crisp and pulled my pan off the heat. No burning, runny yolks.  (I tried this again a day or two later, maintained my faith, and had lovely eggs.)

(Early on in my cooking adventures, I followed a home cook's recipe for a particular item. The writer noted that, at a particular point, it was going to look like it was going to go horribly wrong, and what was going to happen, and that it was okay. I was grateful, because exactly that thing happened and I would have paniced without the writer's assurance. Now THAT's a well written recipe!)

On the other hand, sometimes I need to trust my instincts and I'm sorry when I don't. I am just not experienced enough to have this kind of instinct on my own hook, but I think sometimes my brain will call up a tidbit I've seen on cooking shows without telling me about it. I broiled some eggplant slices recently, following something I'd seen the day before. Something told me to salt the slices and let them sit to reduce the moisture, but it wasn't done in the previous days show, so I didn't. Annnnnnnd my slices were mushy rather than crispy. I should have trusted my instincts. That's often the case. (Except for those times when I did and shouldn't have.)

It's just a matter of trust.




 

Pasta la Vista

So, I've long wanted to try making pasta.

Make pasta? But aren't you...?

Hush.

As I say, I've long wanted to try it, and I even had a friend give me her manual pasta maker (without instructions). And I've seen it done many times on cooking shows. But handling the long sheets of dough as I used the maker really looked like it would exceed my limited dexterity. My intimidation on this point and my ignorance on the operation of my machine kept my machine hidden away for months.

When my awesome friend Karen mentioned making her own pasta, I was inspired sufficiently to find brand and model on my machine and do a web search for a manual. It turns out to be very common and I found a number of how-tos. I also learned that I was missing a clamp, but Karen (AKA The Pasta Muse) pointed out that I could probably buy one online: three ays later, I had a clamp in my hands.

It was time for the dough-y experiment. I found and made a recipe for a really simple pasta, set up a machine, and got to work.

Technically, and that's the only way that mattered, it was a success. The dough had less tendency to stick to itself than I feared, especially since I dusted it with flour often. The machine was easy to use, and I soon had what I'd describe as thin fettuccini.

Taste-wise, it was something less than a total success.  I think my skill in cooking fresh pasta needs work, and I think I'll look at different recipes. Finally, since I like pasta to have some body, I won't make it so thin next time.

But, as is often the case when I'm doing something really new to me, this was more about proof-of-concept than dinner, and I'm delighted with the result.