Sunday Dinner July 13th, 2008 – Pasta
I would like to make something clear for those of you who do not know me personally yet; I am Italian. This is not a crucial or super interesting fact about me, but it does lend reasoning and purpose to some of my more eccentric actions. It explains things like; my predilection for serious, non-ironic facial hair, driving manual transmission cars ludicrously fast when I am alone on dark roads at night, having my friends in the kitchen with me getting dirty while telling lies and giggling. Most importantly I think that it might make explaining why we attempted to make seven courses of pasts in the middle of July a little easier.
As with most of these Sunday meal pretty much everything we set out to accomplish we had never done before and that seemed to lend an interesting sense of accomplishment to each course and each non-failure that was well received by those of you who didn’t have to leave early to see an amazing hip hop show. At the end of the whole day we managed an amazing six of the seven courses, letting the Cantaloupe linguine die quickly after the mid meal smoke break and people were mentioning a bit of a sated feeling that was overcoming them.
Here was the menu we attempted:
- Pea and Carrot Raviolo in consommé freddo
- Maguro with soy glaze and toasted sesame seeds
- Smoked Avocado and crab pansotti, Lime beurre blanc
- Pesto trenette nest with slow poached egg and hot savory whipped cream
- Mole pappardelle with duck ragu
- Cantaloupe linguine with white chocolate ganache (abandoned in favor of Mark’s dangerously good whisky sauce, {see below})
- Whisky and hazelnut manicotti
Menu written with Daniel and Mark
Cooked with Daniel, Mark and Cathy
Without Kristen it would have been impossible.
Thank you all so much.
All photos by: Cathy Erway © 2008 http://noteatingoutinny.com/
Pea and Carrot Raviolo in Consommé Freddo
This dish started, as most on this menu did, at Roberta’s Pizzeria in Flatbush, while Carlo brought out plate after plate of deliciousness and we struggled to obtain beverages. The idea here was to take a standard dish that had absolutely nothing to do with pasta and make it into, well I guess make it into pasta. As obvious as that sounds for this meal it was not as simple as it would seem because most people smarter and more creative than we had already done amazing things with this concept.
So we forgot about it and wrote the rest of the menu and go painfully stuck on this idea of making a cold consommé, and the words ROAST BEEF. Not sure how or why but those two things yielded a desire to make roast beef with peas and carrots. To realize this dream we made carrot ravioli by juice pounds of carrots and reducing the fragrant juice to a syrup and added that to the pasta. Stuffed them with a very soft and fluffy sweet pea and ricotta filling and cooked them very quickly in beef stock. Mark made a shallot and beef stock and we clarified it properly first thing and then dropped it into a salt ice bath to get it super cold. The warm ravioli were then served in the cold broth with a chilled pea greens salad, seen here in great quantity.
Maguro with Soy Glaze and Toasted Sesame Seeds
I am on of those people who firmly believe that marco polo stole pasta when he returned from china in 15th century and that we should appreciate Asian noodles in the same light as Italian noodles. Here we tried to build a dish that would in flavor resemble just a Maguro sushi presentation but instead of sticky sushi rice we opted for hand rolled wasabi udon noodles. The soy glaze was reduced, sweetened and then thickened and it was amazingly clingy.
Smoked Avocado and Crab Pansotti, Lime Beurre Blanc
Pansotti is a name for triangle shaped stuff pasta from the northern part of Italy. I happen to think the word would sound better with an A or E in the middle of it (ie panasotti or panesotti) but that is not my decision to make, as I no longer invent words for the Italian language.
The smoked avocado and crab stuffing was amazing polarizing, clearly defining the people in the room who enjoyed smoked food and those who didn’t. I happen to enjoy smoked foods, which is a very good reason why this dish made it on to the menu in this form, so I was delighted by the earthy fattiness of the avocado played against the sweet crab meat.
Lime juice was reduce into a syrup and mounted with a delicious amount of butter with a handful of shallots and jalapeños to really brighten up the density that was added by the pasta shell. All and all, if you don’t like smoked food you wouldn’t order this; if you do then it was, from most accounts a pretty strong success.
Pesto Trenette Nest with Slow Poached Egg and Hot Savory Whipped Cream
Trenette is another very specific type of long thin pasta that is traditionally served with a pesto sauce. Instead of serving it with a pesto sauce here with added the pesto directly to the pasta and fried them into little nests. Slow poached a quail egg to 63C topped them with a touch of hot whipped cream that was flavored with mushrooms and sweet onions. The idea was that the runny yolk and the cream would form a sauce and the tasty pasta bits would lend texture to the egg and the whole dish. Hot whipped cream being technically impossible without help from science we progress through this batch of sauce with varied results as we attempted a few different hydrocolloids to get us a nice set of soft peaks. End results were sufficient and the sauce was tasty and had a light but slightly dense mouth feel, but more work needs to be done and maybe a little bit of proper research.
Mole Pappardelle with Duck Ragu
Here we infused the mole sauce directly into the pasta so that the dish could be served dry with just a nice clean pile of braised duck on top. The duck was braised in a broth with the full list of ingredients that would be found in a typical mole sauce. Once painfully soft and delicate it was shredded and the braising liquid was reduced into a glaze and the duck was tossed with this.
A mole sauce was made and then chilled and folded directly in with the eggs when making the pasta, which was then kneaded with a combination of mole powder and flour until it was nice and smooth. Topped with a touch of crema and some cilantro, allowed the light spice of the dried peppers to be felt in both the noodle and the meat and allowed the sauce less dish to stay soft and prevent it from sticking.
I am very proud of the flavors of this dish and of the mole duck in general.
Whisky and Hazelnut Manicotti
Manicotti is a specialty of mine, in so much as it is the first pasta I learned how to make and it is only one from which my recipe originates directly in my family and not a combination of family and professional interactions.
The crepes were made neutral and stuffed with a sweet mascarpone cream. The plate had a touch of dulce de leche on it and the crepe was place on top, covered with Mexican chocolate, toasted hazelnuts and amazing whisky syrup that was unbelievably amazing.
This dish turned out to be small enough to be thought of a light way to end a meal and very well balanced between sweet and savory and was favored by most everyone.
Cyndy Sthilaire
on Nov 22nd, 2010
@ 05:44:
I spent a year as an exchange student in Kyoto Japan, and I have to say I probably wouldnt have survived if it wasnt for a cheap dinner of udon a couple of times a week! There is even one shop where you can eat for free if you do 30 minutes of washing after! Anyway, I found a load more tasty looking ideas at this udon recipe site.