Mar 27, 2013

Pasta Shenanigans


By Pervisha Khan

Bismillah

Who says you cannot cook when you have exams or an upset stomach? Living in this part of the World means, obsessed with Delicious spicy food. Yes, yes and 1000 times yes! I am a proud foodaholic. I like to cook more than I like to eat. And this just does not mean I cook under normal circumstances. Nope! My love for food heals me. I cook when I am stressed. I cook when I am sick. I cook when I have exams, yes yes and 100 times yes! Anytime and anything. I just need the will to cook it and there you go!

I had plans to make Gulab Jamun today and blog on that, however, this sudden shift in the taste , in the middle of the night yesterday had me excited about making Italian Pasta dish.

What I do when I have a stomach that is forbidden for ravishing food for awhile? I watch lots and lots of BBC cooking shows online. That is my therapy. This inspires me to get well soon for the sake of those delicious recipes that are still unexplored by me.

So following that, last night I watched Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food program. In a very old episode of it he prepared Italian spaghetti with meatballs. It of course had me off track and I forgot I am on strict diet by the doctor. I went to the kitchen at 2am in the morning with a grumbling tummy and a torch in my hand. Guess what? It is Pakistan. The light can go off any time. The moment I entered the kitchen it went off again for the 100th time. So obviously, a torch came to this damsel’s rescue. I searched for pasta but there was none. So I turned on GPS internet on cell and looked for fresh home made pasta recipe. I stumbled upon a very easy recipe by GialloZafferano, Italy’s number 1 food website. Ingredients for pasta are simple. Eggs and all purpose white flour.

This is how you make Fresh Pasta at home.

I took one 1 small cup of flour for one serving and one egg. Make a pool of flour on clean kitchen shelf or a cutting board will work too. Then make a whole in the middle of it and break one egg in it. Using a fork, gently whip the egg in the centre of the flour and slowly let both the ingredients mix. Then leave the fork and mix it with your fingers. When the mixture has the consistency of a sticky glue, this is the time you need to use your hands and make a soft/hard dough. Please remember, it will not be a very soft dough as we have not used butter in it. That is used in the tart dough not for pasta otherwise your pasta will become just a regular dough of flour.Once your dough is ready after several minutes of hand shake with the flour, you need to put it in the refrigerator for awhile. In my case, it turned out, I put it there and fell asleep. So rest of the recipe was made in the morning.

Roll it well, you will sweat profoundly during this and your dough is now ready to be cut in many pasta shapes.Pipes, lines or bow ties whatever you call it. And Hey! Do you know there are more than 600 pasta shapes in the world? Woof! I made only 2 of them. Farfalle and Fettuccine. Farfalle a type of pasta , commonly known as “bow-tie pasta”, the name is derived from the Italian word farfalla (butterfly).

I'd love to hear your inputs on this post. Please post in the comments section below! :)






1 comments:

mashaAllah beautiful work! home made pastas taste so much better!

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