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!