My Greek Islands Pasta

Several years ago I went backpacking through Europe with a couple of girlfriends. My favorite spot overall was Greece where we spent several weeks. We went to Santorini, Ios, Rhodes, Astypalea, Paros, Antiparos and Naxos. Not planning ahead (because let me tell you about the ferry schedules) we sort of hopped on ferries that were convenient and available based on suggestions from our travel books. It was in this way that we ended up on Astypalea, a tiny little island where we found out after we landed that there was no ferry out for 6 days. In fact it is so tiny it is not listed on wikipedia and only had a population around 1000 if I remember correctly.

We rented a nice little apartment (which I swear you can see in the pic) and became very domestic. Our land lady who spoke very little English gave us fresh tomatoes, eggs and zucchini from her garden and there was a little market up the street that had amazing feta cheese. This is how this recipe was born. We ate this pasta pretty much 4 days in a row with a big loaf of bread. We also ate a version of it for breakfast. Scrambled eggs with Feta, Tomatoes and Zucchini. The woman who worked in the market started to look at us kind of funny cause twice a day one of us would walk up and buy feta and bread from her – I think we went through almost a whole bucket of feta behind the counter.

I made it with a traveling friend a few weeks ago and it tasted almost as good. Make sure you get feta made with Goats milk. It really makes all the difference. (Plus it is great for those of us that are lactose intolerant.)

Ingredients:

- 1 package farfalle (Bowtie pasta)
- 2T olive oil
- 1 red or mild onion
- 2 large scrubbed zucchini
- 3 large tomatoes
- 2 cloves garlic
- a large piece of goats feta (fist-sized)


1. Chop up the onions, tomatoes and zucchini. The onions should be diced and the zucchini and tomatoes can be cut into 1x.5” wedges. Finely chop the garlic.
2. Start the pasta water, it takes about 25 mnutes from here, so you can time it properly. Warm up the olive oil in the pan and add the onion. Saute for 3 minutes then add the garlic for 30 seconds and then finally add the zucchini. Fry the zucchini up for about 5 minutes and add the tomatoes. Cook everything down at a simmer until the zucchini is nicely cooked.
3. Turn the heat off and crumble in the feta, stirring to let it get warmed up. Toss in cooked pasta and serve.

Homemade Bagels!

Tried this recipe for bagels. It was great! You should try it. My only tip is to put a tea towel on the counter to drain the bagels on before putting them back on the cookie sheet.

Thanks bunnyfoot!

I used roasted flax seed as my garnish. Totally fantastic. I think flaxseed bagels should be the new thing!

Newbies Pasta Making Tips

Making the Dough
-If you stick your finger in the dough and it comes out clean and dry thats good - if it is sticky or wet you need to work in more flour.

Rolling the Dough
-Dust and pat with flour continuously.
-Sprinkle rollers with flour.
-Fold in thirds when kneading through the lowest setting of rollers.

Cutting the Dough
-Let it dry for about 10 minutes on each side before cutting. That will help it from not sticking together too much. (Note: if you are using it for stuffed pasta do not do this.)

Drying the Dough
-Think about how you are going to store it. I tried laying it flat to dry it but it didn't turn out flat enough that it was easy to store. (The pasta I hung over a string or put into nests turned out the best.)
-If you want to make nests, lay it dry after cutting and let it dry for another ~10 minutes. Then arrange into light nests.
-You want to make sure it is completley dry before puttting it away or it will grow mold.

And, my favorite source of info from Marcella was that the pasta is homemade it will not taste any different if it is dry or fresh when you cook it.

Pasta Attempt #2 - Marcella's approach

Saturday Night I read through my copy of Marcella Hazan’s Marcella’s Italian Kitchen. I focused specifically on the homemade pasta section. She had several tips and really straight forward advice for things I hadn't done well when I made it with a mixer so I tried again with a small batch (just enough for dinner) on Sunday, this time making the dough by hand. This process is far messier but no more time consuming then using the mixer.

Her recipe for egg dough is a ratio of one large egg to one cup of flour. Ideally your work surface is unfinished wood such as a cutting board. This will be the easiest to knead dough on without sticking. Keep a little extra flour nearby just in case you need it when kneading.

Put the flour on your work surface and make a well in the center. Break the egg(s) into the well and gently whisk with a fork slowly bringing in flour from the sides. When your middle stops being a liquid you can ditch the fork and mix the dough using your hands. Only use as much flour as you need - you will likely not need it all. You should now knead the dough. It will need about 8 minutes worth of kneading to become the elastic consistency you are looking for. If you need flour add it only a teaspoon at a time.

Everything else was the same as with the mixer recipe.

Her other suggestion was once the sheets are as thin as you will want them let them dry for at least 10 minutes before cutting.

Ahh, and the best part, with that simple recipe above it took me 30 minutes total to go from nothing to pasta drying on my counter. Not too shabby huh?

Pasta Attempt #1 - Basic Egg Pasta w/ Mixer

After buying the rollers, which came with spaghetti and fettuccine cutters, on Friday I was all set to make pasta on Saturday. I had read several tips and felt prepared.

I started with the Basic Egg Pasta recipe that came in the instruction booklet.

BASIC EGG NOODLE RECIPE
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon water
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour


You basically put it all in the mixer bowl with the flat beater and mix for 2 minutes. Then attach the dough hook and knead for another 2 minutes. At this point you should be able to tell the consistency of the pasta you have. It should be smooth and not sticky. If you poke your finger into it does it stick? If it does you probably need to add more flour. Once it is at the right consistency take the dough out of the bowl and knead by hand for two minutes. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes.

Up to this point it was easy, it is now that it starts to get tricky. Following the instructions I divided the dough into four, took one ball pressed it flat (~1cm) and ran it through the roller on the widest setting.

It ripped. I folded it over again and dusted it with flour, it pulled on itself and ripped again. So I mushed up the ball put it back to rest and started again with a new ball. After about 15 minutes of frustration it all started to work.

What did I learn?

- Make sure all the pieces are well dusted (then patted down) with flour - if they stick to the plates they will pull in on themselves and tear.
- Make sure the pieces going through at this stage are quite flat, if it really has to pull through the dough rather then flatten it it will also rip.
- Dust the rollers too to be safe.

Once you get it successfully going through you need to use the roller attachment at it's widest setting to knead the dough. Fold it over on itself, press, dust with flour and send it through again. Do this 5-8 times to knead. You can then start moving the plates closer together one level at a time to get the dough to the required thickness.

I am still not sure about resting the dough - that is how much dough you can work with at a time so it won't dry out. But I did find the bigger limitation seemed to be counter space to put it all.

I then traded the roller for the fettuccine cutter and started sending dough through. This all worked quite well and I laid it out in tea towels to dry.

All and all I was quite pleased with how this turned out, it did take quite a long time to get to this stage - but I feel the next attempt will be better. I also ended up with a ton of pasta from this experience - all which is drying quite nicely.

Buying a Pasta Maker Attachment for a Kitchen Aid

Having had such fun making perogies last week I thought I would try and do something equally enterprising and make pasta. I bought a kitchen aid stand mixer 6 months ago and so knowing I could get pasta attachments I did a bit of research.

There seemed to be two ways to go - pasta plates or pasta rollers. This is designed to make two quite different kinds of pasta - extruded and rolled. Examples of extruded pasta would be dried spaghetti and macaroni and examples of rolled would be flat noodles like lasagna and fettuccine.

I went onto the Kitchen Aid Forums and read about people's experiences with the two. The consensus was to get the pasta roller. Though it is more expensive you can make different types of pasta (semolina, durum, whole wheat). Because the motor in the kitchenaid is not meant to be an industrial powered extruder it can't handle extruding really heavy doughs - which limits you to the simple egg based recipe. Furthermore people said that they had a lot of trouble with the pasta sticking together when extruding and not being able to get it apart properly.

Of course this does make sense since the pasta roller set I purchased was 4 times as expensive as the plate option.

(BTW, I could have also bought a cheap detached hand cranked pasta maker which would have been about as expensive as the plates but it would have taken up more room – and several people said that it was much easier to use a powered one, because when using a hand cranked it seemed to require 3 hands. I am sure this would not have been the case with practice, however I caved to the pressure.)

I will post later to detail the making of the pasta.

My Homemade Tomato Soup.

This is not fancy. This is not hard. This is pure cure as far as I am concerned and gets made at least once every cold season and usually more often. It's almost all vitamin C so I don't know how you can go wrong. The best part about it is that usually everything you need is already in the house. Not to forget to give credit it where credit is due, this is my Mums recipe.

(pictured with italian bread)

Ingredients:
-1 large can of whole tomatoes ( or diced, or whatever)
-an equal part chicken stock
-half an onion chopped very thinly.
-several cloves of garlic, at your discretion.
-1t sugar
-1/2 oregano
-1/2 basil
-salt and pepper
-olive oil

How-to:
1. Saute the onions until translucent and and add the garlic and saute for another few minutes.
2. Open the can of tomatoes. I like to take a sharp knife and cut the tomatoes at this stage to get them broken up a bit, you can also use scissors or a potatoes masher when they are in the pot.
3. Add all the rest of the ingredients and simmer for ~20-30 minutes.

Done and Done! Another thing I love when I am sick and goes well is cheese on toast.

Rachel Ray Rocks!

Please forgive the aliteration.
Seriously though, I had always written her off cause she is a little annoying and names her recipes silly things - but I actually cooked one recently and let me tell you it was fantastic and super easy.

I made the walnut spinach pesto, and it was like a 10 minute meal and I also made her greek souvlaki with a feta pesto (known by her to be Chicken Tikka something or other). And again, super yummy and super easy.

So I retract all terrible things I have thought or said about her. She is my new favorite and I am going to suck it up and buy the book.

Perogy?(Pierogie? Perogie?) day

Its kinda like rex manning day. Oh perogy, you're so sexy. Hmm... maybe not.

I tried my hand at making homemade perogies last saturday, something I have wanted to try to do for many years. They actually turned out really really well so I will share the recipe. It is an adaptation of a recipe from the mixer bible.

* A word to the wise. I can usually eat a lot of perogies, say 10 - these are way more filling and 6 still seems to be too many so you can get away with a lot less.


These were your basic cheese and potato style, I think next time I will try meat filled ones. They were quite a lot of fun but took several hours from start to finish. Do what I do, but a marathon on the tube (Gilmore Girls) and just let it run in the background to keep you company. If anyone has any amazing recipes for filling I would love to see them. The major problems I found with the recipe I used was with the filling - firstly there was far too much filling to the amount of dough and secondly it was too bland - it needs onions or chives or something.

I actually froze a bunch for suppers later and they freeze really well too. The trick is to put them on a waxed cookie sheet, not touching, and then bag them when they are frozen. We got a nifty freeze packer for christmas which comes in quite handy.


Dough:
-4 eggs
-1C sour cream
-1t salt
-4 1/4C flour

Filling:
-1 1/4 lb baking potatoes, unpeeled
-1/3C buttermilk
-1 1/2 sharp chedder cheese
-1/4 C chopped green onions
-lots of salt and freshly ground pepper

Making the Filling:
1.Boil potatoes for 20-30 minutes or until tender. Drain and peel once cool enough to handle.
2. Cut them into small pieces and but in a bowl. Mash. (I use my kitchenaid stand mixer on speed 2.)
3. Add rest of filling ingredients and combine.

Making the Dough:
1. Put eggs, sour cream and salt in a bowl and combine (Flat beater in mixer on speed 2).
2. Gradually add flour and mix until a dough forms. Knead for about 8 minutes (or with dough hook on Speed 4 for 2 minutes). If dough sticks add more flour.
3. Let dough rest for about 10 minutes loosely covered.

Making the Perogies:
1. Divide dough in 2 and work with half of it, keeping other half covered.
2. Roll dough to 1/8" thin. Cut dough into 2" rounds ( I used a floured water glass).
3. Place 1/2t of filling in the center and fold into a half moon shape. Pinch edges to seal the perogies. Make sure to seal well or they will explode when boiling. A fork or nails can help.
4. Place perogies on a parchment lined baking sheet ensuring that they are not touching.

To Freeze:
Put perogies in freezer on baking sheet until frozen. Once frozen they can be packed in freezer bags. To cook do not dethaw, just place directly in boiling water.

To Cook:
Put perogies in boiling salted water. The water should be at a lightly rolling boil. Do not put more then 15 in the pot at a time. They should take about 8 minutes. If frozen they should take about 10.

First post

First posts are always really dull. So keeping that tradition going I will at least try to keep this one short.