Spinach pasta

 

When I was divorcing there were all of 5 things I think me and my beloved ex fought over and the fight was quite civilized.  We Rock, Paper, Scissored for them.  I don't see why this method isn't applied in courts. It is the only surefire unbiased method.  Anyhow, the pasta machine -- I lost.  But it made me gain the hand tools and for that I'm thankful.

Pasta is one of those things that cures me.  If I'm feeling particularly blue I must pretend that it is a beautiful sunny day with a bright lovely meal or if it is blowing cold winds then a nice toasty bowl of something calming and warming, and pasta can be both.  It is a little miracle worker.  Cold, hot, savory, spicy ... pasta is a great vehicle for what I need.  It takes love to make good pasta.  You can't do it halfway.  I make handcut pasta, no machine. I am the machine.  So this process is even soothing for me.  You don't even need a bowl - I make a bowl out of the flour on my counter.  Read everything through and then go for it.  It is simple once you're doing it.  There is no mistake making because you can always right it at any step.  If you find your fingers sticky with dough and you need to reach for something to add to the mix just have some standby flour for rubbing your hands with.  Using flour to rub the wet dough from your hands puts the dough back into the pile and off your hands without fuss. Water to clean dough hands will just make paper mache' glue in your sink. 

I have included a lot of photos NOT to intimidate but to demystify the process.  It is very simple once you've done it and then you have it in your cooking lexicon forever.

For about 4 main course or 8 side servings:

2 slightly heaping Cups unbleached flour (white flour will show off veggie pastas best - visually and tastewise)
2 tsp salt
1 Cup (a big fat handful) of Spinach leaves diced up as fine as possible
2 extra large eggs (2 duck or 1/10 an ostrich{jk}) or 3 large eggs
2 TBSP olive oil

Pour the flour onto a large clean surface leaving it in a heap, push the measuring cup or your hand into it to make a little well to hold the other ingredients. Into the well put your eggs, salt, oil, veggie mash/puree and blend the eggs and others in the center and push some of the flour into the center collecting as much flour as it will carry. Clean off your fork into your pile and toss him somewhere out of the way. Get your hands in there and work the dough from this ugly stage into a ball. DO NOT WORRY if it looks like a massive failure. Pasta does that, it is a dirty trick it tries to play on you in a last ditch effort to not be eaten. It will comply with the palm of your hand. If you run out of flour and it wants more then add a little... if it is not blending and it is too dry then add a teaspoon of water until it gives up the goods and becomes blended.  I reserve one of my eggs until after the dough has used the first two up this helps get the remaining stubborn bits in line with the rest.

Third egg goes in to make the dough play nice.

Now that you have won and the ball is formed put it into either a covered bowl to rest or a plastic bag or even a towel or plastic sheet over it while on the board/counter (plastic makes it cooperate best). Have it rest for 10-20 minutes until it goes from dry and slightly leathery to lightly sticky and pliable. If not, give it a little more time. Clean up the chunky flour, sieve it and toss the chunks. Re-flour your big clean surface and press your ball out by hand into the floured surface allowing it to collect flour on both of its sides... form the ball into a rectangle to help you roll it out. Make certain flour is under it and roll, roll, roll, until it becomes smooth and thin.  It is best to check often to see if it is sticking to your surface and keep it well floured. The flour keeps the pasta dough from sticking to itself, the rolling pin and your surface all of which can drive you insane so be thorough.  This is the most time consuming part - the rolling.

 Once rolled out to be quite thin 1/16th of an inch? I don't know, I'm not an architect. Thin, but not totally translucent or anything. Flour the top which you were rolling on, flip and flour that side wipe off any extreme excess . Starting at one of the short sides roll it like a tube onto itself lightly.  (It is best if there is a nice even coat of flour on the surface so as you roll the pasta dough wont stick to itself and once you start cutting it will help the layers not stick either as they are mashed together.)

 Once you have your tube cut little slices all the way through to make pasta strands. They'll look like little snails and now they can be put somewhere to dry or can be cooked straight away. I used to dry them for awhile or overnight so they are toothy and firmer but I find that cooking it less yields a quicker and tastier product.  Fresh pasta does cook faster than boxed pasta so monitor it closely.  It cooks in almost half the time or even less.  Fresh pasta shouldn't be left unmonitored because it's cooking time is so short. 2-4 minutes

I'm a big big fan of handcut pasta as it catches sauce nicely and looks legit.  My favorite toppings for veggie pastas are more veggies.  The one pictured plated is mixed baby greens a drizzle of olive oil, coarse sea salt, goat feta, cracked pepper, and grated carrot.  It marries a salad with pasta and keeps away the mayo demons of pasta salads.  Our feta comes from Alsea Acre Goat Cheese via some good friends who are major supporters of their local farmers and local organic foods.  If you'd like to get it from Alsea directly and talk a bit or learn about them and their practices you can find them by clicking the linked name.

Mmmm, okay one more.

Brands, batches and consistency

Bonne Maman... doing it right!

One of the most disheartening things about trying to greatly reduce MSG and related excitotoxins from your diet is when something agrees with you just fine one time and not the next.  It's one of the things that starts to make you wonder if feeling good or bad after a meal is psychosomatic.  Well, there are a few things that make this very challenging, which I'll go through in a moment.  I will also detail some brands that we've had pretty good luck with.

First, let's talk about consistency.  Virtually all food manufacturers rely on a large number of sources.  The same is true of your local market.  Have you noticed how the veggies one week come from California, and Mexico the next?   Even individual brands have multiple sources that can change depending on a number of factors including price, weather, and competing purchasers.  If Farm A runs out of something, the supermarket or food manufacturer needs to have Farm B-G already lined up.  And, to make things even more complicated, Farm A may actually be a collective of farms and not just one!

So, with multiple suppliers in place, consistency becomes nearly impossible.  But, what does consistency really mean?  You'd think a red pepper one place would be the same as another, especially if organic, right?  Well, this is not the case, especially where regional differences are in play.  You see every area, every farm has its own unique challenges in terms of climate, pests, rainfall, and so on.  There's also the experience and preference of the farmers themselves.  Some prefer to use no sprays at all, some use organic sprays, and some mix both techniques depending on the time of year.  All of these circumstances can have a pepper be fine one week and not the next.  While it is true that organic sprays are generally healthier than non-organic sprays, they often have a much higher MSG/excitoxic content.  Organic sprays can (and do) employ MSG and broken down protein as a binder agent.  Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard to wash binder agents and waxes off of produce.  Also, organic fertilizers (like fish emulsion as one example) leach into root vegetables, and some other vegetables as well.  The net effect is a reaction, regardless of it being organic.  So, now you can see why consistency is really an illusion unless you know the people who grow your food on a first name basis -- and this can only happen if you shop at a farmer's market for most/all of your produce.  It was at this point we thought - Gardening doesn't sound as daunting as it once did.

 the Portland farmer's market

So, for those who don't have this option (most of us), we have to rely on brands that are as consistent as they can be.  This requires the company's commitment to buying from a select group of suppliers, and not changing ingredients regularly.  These are most often small companies that have individual relationships with their suppliers much like we all shhttp://www.bobsredmill.com/ould with those who grow and produce our food.

Now, there are two other important factors about selecting products that you should know.  First, companies are constantly shifting their ingredients to improve their sales and profit margins.  This has been seen in the greatest way in the shift from real sugar to corn syrup.  When a company changes their ingredients, they have 6 months to change the labels under the law.   It also appears that this law is not regularly or consistently enforced.  So, the end result (and probably the most maddening of all) is you do fine with something one week and not the next, but the ingredients on the label remain exactly the same.  You are only vindicated later when you pick up the same product and the label has changed.  Were it not for this happening several times, I might have thought I was crazy.

This leads to another important point -- TRUST YOUR INTUITION!  When you eat a product, the company has absolutely no concern or allegiance to you other than their obligation to list the ingredients and nutritional value.  Even small companies get regularly bought by giant corporations.  Like Burt's Bees is now CLOROX. Gross, oh, and they've added soy protein (essentially broken proteins with the same negative effects as MSG) to their ingredients since the purchase. They are in it to make money and in rare cases they use that money for good.   So, you can only rely on your own body to let you know if what you are eating is good for you.  The terrible thing is we are conditioned through advertising, the media, our friends and even the government to blindly trust that what we are eating is safe.  This leads to an inevitable clash between what your body is telling you, and what your mind is trying to rationalize.  Making the matter even worse is when you have spent a lot of time cooking and realize after it is done you've somehow used an ingredient that is bad.  This means you either throw away your hard work, or you eat it and suffer the consequences -- something I cannot bring myself to do anymore because of how awful I feel as a result.   It's always easier to check things out thoroughly at the beginning of the cooking process.

One side note I have found.  When cooking, if you get red in the face or feel "flushy" this can be a sign that what you are cooking has MSG in it.   I am no scientist, but when MSG-laden steam hits me, I can feel it.  In fact, going into a restaurant that uses it extensively gives me a major headache.  If you catch trouble during the cooking process, it's an easier burden to bear than once the entire dish/meal is done.

So, in my experience, there are a few brands that seem fairly consistent.  They are in no particular order:

Bob's Red Mill flours (make sure they are not enriched or contain malted barley or corn starch!), yeast and corn meal/corn flour.  The white unbleached is enriched, the ORGANIC white unbleached is not.
King Arthur flours (same deal regarding enriched/malted barley usually "bread flour" is the culprit along with white all-purpose so check labels!)
Hodgson Mills flour (do I have to say it again?)
Lundberg Farms rice (yep, watch out for enrichment in rice too...)
Kerry Gold butter and cheddar (the unsalted is cultured, all cultured butter is bad for you)
Laura Chenel's Chevre goat cheese
Simply Organic pure vanilla extract only
Eden Organic brown mustard, crushed tomatoes and diced tomatoes (not the pasta sauce, or any other kind of sauce)
BioNature strained tomatoes
Coombs organic Maple syrup
Organic Adriatic fig spread it is Croatian and delicious.
Bonne Maman preserves (they have citric acid, but seem OK as the pectin is fruit not corn {yet?})
Humane Harvest eggs (during the winter can be more problematic due to the chickens eating soy)
Eggs - are best obtained locally and by making sure the farm you get them from feeds the chickens no corn or soy.  Cheaper usually too than the store bought.
Stahlbush Island Farms
Whole Foods Market 365 Brand organic whole wheat pasta
John McCann's steel cut oats
Fleishmann's yeast (this and Bob's are the only ones we don't react to)
Dagoba Choco-drops (Dark chocolate always, as milk chocolate has broken milk protein/caseine)
Sunspire Organic Chocolate Chips (semi-sweet)
French Meadow Bakery - European sourdough rye as some seeded breads can cause issues.
Sunshine Dairy (they don't use flash pasteurization, which while sounding like the future actually makes the protein more unstable, and this is what a majority of organic milk producers do, nor does Sunshine use rBGH)

Stahlbush Island Farms is a 2200 acre farm near Corvallis, Oregon doing it right

We will update these, as well as adding our favorite farms from Local Harvest.  remember that these foods are like "fast foods" when you can't call on things you have preserved, grown yourself or from farms you have a relationship with.

Pasta

This pasta is so easy to do you can even have kids make their own portions if you have space and the patience for messy little ones.

The approximate proportions are for every 3/4-1 Cup flour an egg, a teaspoon of water, a teaspoon of salt and a TBSP of olive oil be used. From there you can make a great variety of kinds. You can leave out the oil and use more egg or you can leave out oil and use more water. Or in the water's place some puree spinach or herbs instead.

For about 4-6 servings is the recipe that follows:
1 slightly heaping cup unbleached flour
1 slightly heaping cup whole wheat
2 tsp salt
2 extra large eggs or 3 large eggs
2 TBSP olive oil

I chopped up a sprig of rosemary and put a little palm full into the 'pasta well.'

Pour the flour onto a large clean surface leaving it in a heap, push the measuring cup or your hand into it to make a little well to hold the other ingredients. Into the well put your eggs, salt, oil, any herbs or veggie mash/puree and blend the eggs and others in the center and push some of the flour into the center collecting as much flour as it will carry. Clean off your fork into your pile and toss him somewhere out of the way. Get your hands in there and work the dough from this ugly stage into a ball. DO NOT WORRY if it looks like a massive failure. Pasta does that, its a dirty trick it tries to play on you in a last ditch effort to not be eaten. It will comply with the palm of your hand. If you run out of flour and it wants more then add a little... if it is not blending and it is too dry then add a teaspoon of water until it gives up the goods and becomes blended.


Now that you have won and the ball is formed put it into either a covered bowl to rest or a plastic bag. Have it rest for 10-20 minutes until it goes from dry and leathery to lightly sticky and pliable. If not, give it a little more time. Clean up the chunky flour, sieve it and toss the chunks. Re-flour your big clean surface and press your ball out by hand into the floured surface allowing it to collect flour on both of its sides... form the ball into a rectangle to help you roll it out. Make certain flour is under it and roll, roll, roll, until it becomes smooth and thin. This is the most time consuming part. Once rolled out to be quite thin 1/16th of an inch? I don't know, I'm not an architect. Thin, but not totally translucent or anything. Flour the top which you were rolling on, flip and flour that side wipe off excess. Starting at one of the short sides roll it like a tube onto itself lightly.

 Once you have your tube cut little slices all the way through to make pasta strands. They'll look like little snails and now they can be put somewhere to dry or can be cooked straight away. I like to dry them for awhile or overnight so they are toothy and firmer. So if you like al dente then drying is for you.  Fresh pasta does cook faster than boxed pasta so monitor it closely.  It cooks in almost half the time.

I made a spinach pasta and was so excited that I didn't document much. So I promise to post that SOON!