In My Kitchen February 2024 and making fresh pasta

When this post is published, I expect to be in Rome.  I wasn't sure what to do about the February  edition of In My Kitchen until I had some dishes I wanted to share.  The above dish is not just a home made vodka pasta sauce but also home made pasta. I wanted a few notes on my first foray into pasta making. 

I am writing this mid-January before I leave for my trip.  The weeks after Christmas always feel a bit of time to relax, potter around the house and refresh for the year ahead.  The kids are on holidays, many businesses close and the sun shines.  I've got some home organisation done - dropped off stuff at the op shop, given some unused stationery to the Operation Backpack program that distributes it to local children, given Sylvia smashed ipad to the Apple store for recycling, dug out my digital camera for Sylvia to use, Sylvia's baby towels and other worn-out clothes to H&M, taken a ream of old bills and papers to Officeworks to shred and cleaned the house more than I have for a few years. 

I went to visit a friend in Mulgrave and took some Condensed milk choc chip cookies.  When thinking about baking something to take to afternoon tea, I fixated on a can on Ube purple condensed milk and decided to try it in a favourite choc chip cookie recipe.  The result was purple but not overly so.  My friend's son loved them but thought they were chocolate and I wasn't sure if he would have liked to hear they had purple ube in them so I just smiled at his enthusiasm.  

Having a long drive alone was a good opportunity to listen to ABC RN.  I heard about Julian of Norwich (fascinating for her 30 years sealed in a room on the side of a church and her book being the earliest existing English-language book by a woman), a discussion on Forever (a documentary about Judy Blume and her fantastic books for teens), and a inspiring interview with Sinéad Burke, Irish fashion blogger and disability activist.

I have tried to avoid buying too much food for our kitchen.  As I write we are trying to use up what is in the fridge and pantry.  It has taken self control with all the post-Christmas sales but I did give in to temptation when I saw these Chocolate Rocky Road Tarts for sale.  They had a very pleasing fudgy chocolate filling topped with marshmallows, raspberry jelly lollies and shredded coconut.  All in a chocolate pastry shell, which was almost unnecessary!  The biggest surprise when I got home was that there were only 5 tarts: one was missing.  This was a little disturbing but I really just wanted a taste of them and could live with one less than I thought I purchased.

This photo is one where it just does not give justice to the food.  It is a walnut, mushroom and cauliflower minced meat substitute.  I was impressed that this was just a matter of finely chopping in the food processor, mixing with oil and salt and then roasting until dried and smelling amazingly good (like a baked potato, Sylvia said).  Sylvia took it from this vegan ragu recipe for the below soup.

Sylvia's vegan minced meat starred in this Lasagna soup.  I asked her for her recipe source and she said she just looked at different recipes and used them as inspiration.  It was quite thick like a traditional lasagna with bolognaise sauce.  It was quite thick and reminded me of a lasagna that is hot out of the oven and will not hold its shape.  Sylvia liked this because she made the bolognaise sauce and broke up lasagna sheets to cook in it rather than doing the layering.  She topped it with basil and spoonfuls of ricotta that had been mixed with parmesan, salt and pepper.  The soup with ricotta mixed through tasted great.  There was grated cheese in the soup but it was not so noticeable.  I loved it, though it was quite rich.  Sylvia would have liked more lasagna sheets in it.

Sylvia went out with her grandfather and father to Galleon in Carlisle Street, St Kilda.  This is her leftover that she brought home.  She also brought a pumpkin, basil and parmesan scone for me.  It was more like a muffin but was amazing: fresh, flavourful and soft.  Sylvia was delighted that the Drunken Sailor big breakfast gave the option of substituting bacon for avocado.  So hers was Two eggs on buttered sourdough multigrain toast with avocado, mushrooms, tomato and spinach, plus she had a sweet potato and feta hash on the side.  Of course it was too much and she brought home quite a bit of it.  Her dad had Banana, pistachio Praline, vanilla bean ricotta and maple syrup.  E could not eat it all so there was some of that in a tub.  It was rich and delicious.

I bought a pasta machine so many years ago that it seems like I have had it at the back of the cupboards in a box forever.  Every now and again I say I will make fresh pasta but get distracted.  Then about a week before I wrote this, I said I would made it and I did.  Yes, I was surprised.  And pleased and proud! 

I started off following the Kitchn's guide on how to make fresh pasta.  I followed their recipe of 2 and 2/3 cups of flour, 4 eggs and 3/4 teaspoon of salt.  My dough was really tough.  I guessed it was because they use an American cup measure (240ml) and I used an Australia measuring cup (250ml). I gradually added water to the dough but I was worried it was not quite right.  So I made another dough with 2 eggs, 1 cup of flour and less salt.  This one was really soft and needed some extra flour.  The pictures above show the two doughs.  The yellow one on the right is the second soft dough.  If I stuck a finger in it, I could easily push through to the table.  The paler stiffer dough on the left was tough to knead and if I pushed my finger into it it seemed a bit of an effort to make a deep dint and I did get as far in as the table.  I want to try dough again and will do 4 eggs, 2 and 1/3 cups of flour and 3/4 tsp salt.

Once the dough was made I had to work out my Imperia pasta machine.  There was only one piece I could not fit on it but it wasn't necessary.  I used a piece of the drier dough to give the machine a quite clean of any grime, as suggested in one website.  I watched a few videos on the machine.  Then I fed the pasta through the machine on ever decreasing thickness (2-3 goes on each thickness) until it was a good consistency and made some fettucine and spaghetti.  So far so good.  I even wondered if I should have gone as far as making a second dough.  The first seemed fine.

So I then made lots of fettuccine, given I had two batches of pasta.  I actually left some in the fridge a covered bowl overnight because there was so much.  Once I made the fettuccine I hung it over a chair, feeling like an Italian nonna.  Some of it I cooked fresh and it cooked really quickly - about as long as it took to bring the water back to the boil when I added it.  The rest I let dry and we ate it over a few days.  The vodka tomato pasta in the top photo is one of these.  I cooked it too quickly and found it was not quite soft enough.  There is still work to be done in getting a good feel for making and cooking the pasta.

The fresh pasta I cooked to mix with Sylvia's alfredo sauce (based on this recipe).  It was amazing.  Sylvia is very into creamy pasta sauces and was very excited for an opportunity to try something new.  Creamy sauces are not really my thing but this fettuccine alfredo with crispy Tofu bacon and parsley was so so good.

Previously I had made pasta with a friend about 30 years ago.  So I am happy with my first solo fresh pasta making.  It needs some work but I hope to try it again.  We are planning to try ravioli.  I just hope it does not take me so long to get to my second go at pasta making.

I was inspired by Lorraine at Not Quite Nigella to try her Sardinian Minestrone.  Once I realised it did not have sardines in it, it sounded healthy and delicious.  I made lots of changes: not many carrots, no potato, no fresh garlic and added garlic granules, sweet potato, capsicum, cherry tomatoes, capsicum, zucchini and more barley.  It was so good and there was so much.  I ate it for meals on a couple of days and then to my horror realised I should have put it in the fridge.  After two days it had soured and had to be thrown out, along with my plans for meals this week.  What a shame job!  Thank goodness for the Council's composting scheme.  I have made another stew for the rest of the week and promised myself to be more careful in future.

 My mum's green thumb has produced lots of apricots and yellow zucchinis.  The apricots were unripe so I left them on the bench.  Within a few days they were really lovely despite still looking quite green on the outside.  I had to put some into the freezer to avoid them feeding the compost like my minestrone.  It is well known that home grown apricots are far superior in flavour to those in the supermarket.  These were juicy and delicious.  I ate some standing up at the table and some with my muesli and yoghurt.  They reminded me of the apricots off my nan's tree that we loved as a kid even though the juice would dribble down our chins.  The zucchinis went into my ill-fated minestrone which was good until it wasn't.

We haven't been out as much as expected.  Sylvia and I had a trip around St Kilda that included a walk along Kerford Pier and pizza at Rococo.  I met a friend to see One Life at the cinema.  It was an excellent film about rescuing refugees from Prague on the eve of war in 1938-9.  The story is very relevance today.  I heard recently that there are now the most refugees since World War II.  We've been down Lygon Street with my parents and to a few cafes with friends. The photo is of chocolate fudge and 100s and 1000s doughnuts at Juanita Peaches where we had a burrito and an eggplant burger with chips.

Sylvia made this simple meal where she fried oil, parsley and garlic, added a bit of hot water, sauted the tomatoes and mix in some angel hair pasta.  Served with lots of parmesan.  It was a change from her creamy sauces, which I call a heart attack in a bowl..  Simple but very good.

There has been lots of preparation for our trip to Europe: collating tickets, writing an itinerary, researching things like an e-sim and money options, purchasing portable chargers, packing suitcases, planning to see people, and online research.  I've got my suitcase lock stuck with packing in it (but Sylvia worked out the combination after trying hundreds of combos).  I have found a lost passport when looking for my current one (and I looked a lot for it before getting another). Shadow was very interested in my case.

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event. If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.