We're doing an on-line cooking class and there is a lesson on basic pasta and then a stuffed agnolotti. We decided I should try it for my dad's birthday dinner (and by 'we' I mean the wife said I had to cook ).
The dough was different than what I had been using. Still using 00 flour, but this one uses almost 14 yokes and a little oil and milk. Resting the dough overnight is recommended and I'll do it every time from now on based on how this stuff turned out. It was so easy to work with:
The filling (or 'farce' in fancy chef speak) was a combination of brioche crumbs, mascarpone cheese and... blanched frozen peas. Yea, I was skeptical but Thomas Keller says do this, so who am I to argue. Grind it all up, and then press the mix through a tamis. That was a pain, but what you end up with is a super smooth filling. Getting all the pea fibers out of there made a huge difference. I didn't think it would be that noticeable, but it was.
So take your farce and put it into a pastry bag and after rolling sheets of dough out just squirt an even 3/8" bead of calk, er, filling in a line. Flip the edge over, press it in/down with your thumb to seal, pinch off every 1" or so and then cut apart with a wheel:
It took some fiddling around with the process but as I went I got better at it and toward the end of the first tray they started to look presentable.
To cook, just boil them for a few minutes. While they're boiling, get a saute pan going with butter, chicken stock and a little vinegar and start that simmering and reducing and then pop the mostly cooked pasta in there. Let it reduce down, and in the end add some bacon bits (already cooked) and a few peas.
Badly plated, it looks like this:
The funky thing on top is a bit of parmesan crisp. Just take long slivers of parmesan and layer them into a non-stick pan enough to make a lattice and then slowly heat them until it starts to brown and crisp up. You can get fancy shaping them like Keller, or go with the 'bust them up and add pieces to the top of the dish' method we used because we're not Keller.
Best pasta to date, and I have a few dozen of them left in the freezer. These are so much faster and easier to crank out than ravioli I may just end up doing these from now on. I rolled the dough out to a '7' on the kitchen aid roller, so pretty thin. If I used a coarser meat/cheese farce I would skip the tamis step and only go to a '6' on the pasta roller to make them more substantial feeling. The veggies/cheese really benefited from the super smooth texture, but I don't think meat would. I don't like foie gras, I'm not into my meat having no texture like that.
The dough was different than what I had been using. Still using 00 flour, but this one uses almost 14 yokes and a little oil and milk. Resting the dough overnight is recommended and I'll do it every time from now on based on how this stuff turned out. It was so easy to work with:
The filling (or 'farce' in fancy chef speak) was a combination of brioche crumbs, mascarpone cheese and... blanched frozen peas. Yea, I was skeptical but Thomas Keller says do this, so who am I to argue. Grind it all up, and then press the mix through a tamis. That was a pain, but what you end up with is a super smooth filling. Getting all the pea fibers out of there made a huge difference. I didn't think it would be that noticeable, but it was.
So take your farce and put it into a pastry bag and after rolling sheets of dough out just squirt an even 3/8" bead of calk, er, filling in a line. Flip the edge over, press it in/down with your thumb to seal, pinch off every 1" or so and then cut apart with a wheel:
It took some fiddling around with the process but as I went I got better at it and toward the end of the first tray they started to look presentable.
To cook, just boil them for a few minutes. While they're boiling, get a saute pan going with butter, chicken stock and a little vinegar and start that simmering and reducing and then pop the mostly cooked pasta in there. Let it reduce down, and in the end add some bacon bits (already cooked) and a few peas.
Badly plated, it looks like this:
The funky thing on top is a bit of parmesan crisp. Just take long slivers of parmesan and layer them into a non-stick pan enough to make a lattice and then slowly heat them until it starts to brown and crisp up. You can get fancy shaping them like Keller, or go with the 'bust them up and add pieces to the top of the dish' method we used because we're not Keller.
Best pasta to date, and I have a few dozen of them left in the freezer. These are so much faster and easier to crank out than ravioli I may just end up doing these from now on. I rolled the dough out to a '7' on the kitchen aid roller, so pretty thin. If I used a coarser meat/cheese farce I would skip the tamis step and only go to a '6' on the pasta roller to make them more substantial feeling. The veggies/cheese really benefited from the super smooth texture, but I don't think meat would. I don't like foie gras, I'm not into my meat having no texture like that.