pesto pasta

Sometimes on days like today I feel like coming entirely out of the Zone™ and fix a bowl of straight-up carbs. I've been such a good boy, I deserve it. Today, I wanted to start from the beginning and to play with the dough every step of the way. I wanted to control the ingredients, the density, the texture, the cut and the color. I wanted to control it so much I eschewed the Atlas machine, which does the rolling and the cutting, because I wanted to roll it by hand and to slice each individual noodle with a knife, and practice my mad knife skillz. The idea arose from the desire to use up the basil pesto I muddled the other day. I'd loosen it with olive oil to spread it around and that would be that.

But then, along the way I decided I really must have tomatoes, but today I only have canned and that makes me feel bereft. Oh well, they're not altogether bad.   I thought. Tomatoes and pesto, Yay!, a green schmeer with red spots. Of course I'd need Parmigiano too. OK, that does it then, dark green pesto with Parmigiano coating atop a bed of diced tomatoes and that will be it.

But then while retrieving the Parmigiano I saw those mushrooms, sad little things, and they don't have long to live. OK fine, tomatoes and mushrooms, just plain and simple, and that will be it.

Hey, where did this onion come from? Onion needs garlic. Ok, that will be it.

Stop it already! Or there goes your simple use-up-your-pesto idea.

This will be pasta dough in the usual way. The thing is, I already have dried noodles in various forms, and they're all great, so this doesn't make sense beyond a simple desire to play with dough.

* A half an egg shell worth of water added to the egg in a bowl. A good egg. A good, fresh, upstanding, free range egg. An egg from a happy chicken that eats bugs and any small thing it can find. An egg that would have been a fine bird given half a chance. I always feel a little sorry for those birds that got eaten as eggs, and by little, I mean this little ---> . <--- that little dot worth of sorry. 

* Semolina and AP flour 50/50 . That's the ratio I like. I love those bins at Whole Foods, that's where I score the semolina, I could hang out there for hours. I chat it up with whoever else is there. I tell them what I discovered and what I am up to. I keep the employees distracted. I'm quite annoying. People where I live just want to get on with it. I figure, well, you look like you're certifiably mad when you're talking into that Bluetooth with nobody else apparent like that so I might as well break in. 

* Formed into a ball, kneaded a little then rested. I don't know why it has to rest, I did all the work. Actually, here's why it rests; when you add water to flour, or any liquid for that matter, the flour releases its own enzymes within those minute wheat granules that begin to break apart the starch molecules into simpler sugars. Enzymes are proteins that act as tiny keys performing upwards to twenty thousand molecular unlocking actions per second depending on the type of protein and the thing being acted upon and the solution they find themselves. So they're fast. In the case of wheat dough, it is the wheat digesting itself in the presence of water. There are other things going on as well involving other chemical reactions and possibly other organisms. Also, the dough is hydrolyzing, that is the water molecules, brilliant little things, migrate around trying to even out themselves within the dough mass. It's like gym class where all the members are made to stand at arm's length from each other and actually stick out their arms to measure. This process of enzymatic self-digestion, autolyse, and the process of hydrolyzing, is common to bread doughs and to noodle doughs. So the dough is rested while we see to other pasta ingredients and get a pot of water heated. You can feel in your hands the difference this rest period makes. 

* The dough is rolled with a rolling pin. 

* The flattened dough is dusted with flour and loosely rolled into a dough snake. 

* The dough snake is cut into individual noodles. This is done quickly and remarkably skillfully for a klutz such as myself, it might surprise you if you were to see it.

* The pasta snake bits that are now coiled noodles are jumbled so they don't boil as tight doughy little spirals

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