A cookalong trial

In California today, Saturday 7 August, a group of people are gathering in the kitchen of one of them to cook together. They also drink and snack and get silly, but that’s the nature of gatherings, right? It was suggested that some of us way too far away to join in might cook separately and report, as they will, on the dish(es) cooked and the progress made. Naturally they will eat together what they’ve made. Those of us not there will eat alone, poor us.

People generally make something they consider a specialty, a strong point, even a signature dish. I suppose they try to fit their choices together into a menu that works, or sort of works, but I don’t know that for sure. Lucky me, I don’t have to care what they made!

I decided that my strength lies in inventing recipes using found foods. My other strength is profound grounding in Italian cooking philosophy. I will prepare two or three dishes based on these things and try to remain sober while so doing. My dishes will be done way ahead of theirs, because there’s no way I can stay awake to cookalong with a nine hour difference, and besides, there’s a Bollywood movie on tonight and I always iron while watching Bollywood movies. That makes my house the crispest and smoothest in town during the Bollywood season.

This is what will be in my crab pasta

What I am planning is a pasta made from crab legs, a pasta made with giant shrimp and a main dish salad with grilled shrimp. These seafoods all come from a newish shop in town which sells frozen seafood from all over the world from help yourself bins. Umbria has no coast, so a lot of our fish is thawed and previously frozen. I reckon that if I am the one in charge, I’ll know it’s been handled correctly, right? Plus I am dying to find out how good these particular items are.

I’ll be posting updates with pictures as the day goes on. I was up at 5:58, coffeed and on the road for my daily exercise by 7:00, emptied the trash and the compost bin and now I am ready to roll. My connection is still slow and has failed twice this morning, but patience I will find and eventually all will find its way here — or it won’t!

12:46

So far, so good. The photos are not getting uploaded very fast, but most of them get there.

This is the beginning

I weighed 200 grams of 00 flour, which is our commonest flour, added a good pinch of salt and then made a well in it and added two eggs. This is what it looks like after being stirred up a bit with a fork and my hands. The start is always messy because the whites don’t behave. By dint of scraping and kneading, however, I did get a nice dough that weighed about 300 grams. I put it in a plastic bag to keep it moist and left it alone while I did other things. You don’t have to rest it, but it is marginally more manageable if you do.

One sixth of the dough

I recommend that until you are really a dab hand at rolling pasta, you divide the dough into pieces roughly 50 grams in weight. That is 1/6th of what I made here and this is what it looks like. The first step in rolling is fold and roll, fold and roll at number 1, which makes your pasta have layers and ensures that every molecule of flour is drenched in egg– although the resting will usually take care of that anyway.

Taglierini

I made half into taglierini

and half into pappardelle.

then, using a silicone pastry brush, I cleaned all the flour off the little pasta roller and put her into her box, where she has lived the last 30-odd years, on both sides of the Atlantic.
At this moment, the worst that can happen to me is that I must eat fresh pasta. I can think of worse fates. I have no appetite yet because I ate an American breakfast, so everything can sit here and dry on its nice fresh dish towel. Later, folks.

14:16

Cooking by hammer. These crabs, which resemble stone crabs only much bigger, have shells as thick as plates. Nutcrackers bedamned, it takes a hammer. Hope I find all the pieces of shell, because shell bits drive eg cahrayzee.

Still, it’s important, because I need to get the meat out raw to be sure it doesn’t go all salty as so many times crab will do when boiled in the shell. These are sure not my beloved Chesapeake blues!

Don’t forget to drop by Friday, August 20 to see the many pasta dishes that will come from around the world to be published as Presto Pasta Nights on Thyme for Cooking, hosted by Kate.