Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Del Posto

Here is a wonderful video that showcases Cappellacci being made at Del Posto.  Del Posto, 1 star michelin, is a New York restaurant owned by Mario Batali.  At the helm of Del Posto's kitchen is a JWU graduate by the name of Mark Ladner.  Cappellacci refers to the style of this particular stuffed pasta.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Asian Noodles (Pasta)

I personally love going down the street for a bowl of noodles at a local Japanese restaurant. I have a friend at the helm of the kitchen who does some great food for reasonable prices (always great). The noodle bowls that you can get from that reastaurant are wonderful. Always on the menu are Udon and Soba noodles.

These simple noodle bowls have caught my attention to make them at home.

Here is a viedo of the art of making soba noodles. Note that traditional Italian pastas take egg, but as you watch you will see that like the Soba noodles, and others such as Ramen and Udon do not.

Enjoy

Monday, January 10, 2011

Flat Pastas

There really is not too much involved with making pastas, especially when using a pasta machine.  The following are the basic pastas that anyone can make.  With just a few ingredients and some patience you can have your favorite flat pasta.

From Left to Right: Angel Hair, Fettucini, Tagliatelle, Pappardelle, Lasagna (sheet pasta)

All of the above pastas started with just the sheet pasta.  With just a few turns from the pasta attachment and a couple cuts from the knife, you can have all of these pastas at your disposal.  I did use a pasta attachment that came with my machine for the angel hair and the fettucini, but for the tagliatelle and pappardelle I used a knife.  The angel hair is about 2 mm in width, fettucini is about 8 mm in width, tagliatelle is about 10 mm in width, and pappardelle is about 20 mm in width.  Some of you may be thinking "where is the linguini?".  For those partial to linguini, it is about 6 mm in width.  It can commonly be mistaken for fettucini or even tagliatelle.  The purpose of the flat pastas is not to mention or show all the varieties of flat pastas; it was to show the manipulation of a sheet of pasta and how some of the most common pastas can be created from just a sheet.

Here is a slideshow of most of the steps taken to make the above pastas.

Flat Pastas on PhotoPeach