The crispy, shattering crust of a skillfully made croissant is the stuff of childhood memories in France. Unfortunately, in America, croissants are the stuff of partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oils, sodium benzoate, and high fructose corn syrup. It’s no wonder that the French can barely contain their hatred for fast food USA.

Of course, the croissant is not even French to begin with, but is actually Viennese and my first understanding of the croissant was as an Austrian treat. My mother visited Austria with a few friends of hers after graduating college and had swooned over breakfast at her hostel where the owners baked croissant each morning to serve alongside jam and coffee. As a woman who cooked most all of my childhood dinners herself and from scratch, I knew she couldn’t be talking about the ham and cheese, steam-injected item on the value menu. It wasn’t until I myself was out of college though that I mustered the courage to attempt making my own homemade croissant.

Butter, Yeast, and Courage

Courage, you say? To make croissant? Surely you jest, Stumbling Epicure! Yet, I assure you, making this delicacy takes a long time, has many steps, and is relatively expensive to mess up and have to or suffer sub-par results or worse, throw away. I cannot deny though, that for the croissant crazy, until you’ve had fresh from your own oven, you haven’t had croissant.

The first reward you’ll receive for attempting croissant is the joy of having an excuse to buy fancy, expensive butter. Plugra, Lescure, Beurre d’Isigny, whatever you decide to splurge on, it will be well worth your money. Croissant is basically yeasted puff pastry, and the butter is the primary flavor of the whole thing. If you’re not going to buy the good stuff, it’s not worth the effort.

One thing I can’t quite understand about croissant is why every recipe seems to call for fresh yeast? Yeast, in my opinion is a big pain. While I love the way it smells and the poofy results it gives bakers, I’ve had bad luck with the stuff in the past and had to embrace my inner garbage disposal to try and salvage my unleavened creations. Most of my problems stem from using the standard active dry yeast that you can buy at most any grocery stores. It either won’t proof right, or I scald the poor things instead of coaxing them back to life. So, using fresh yeast feels a bit like an insurance policy if you know where to get it and I’ve had pretty good luck with the stuff thus far. Unfortunately, it’s tough to find and even in New York City, where rendered goose fat and anchovy extract are only a subway ride away, I only know of one place in Manhattan that sells fresh yeast. If you’re fascinated by the whole yeast discussion there’s a good summary of the different types here and more of an explanation on how to convert fresh yeast quantities into active dry yeast quantities here. And, if you’re on the prowl for the fresh stuff, Red Star makes a good batch that’s the bees knees as far as I’m concerned.

Who You Callin’ a Détrampe?!

To make your croissant you first have to make your détrampe, or yeasted dough, which you can then combine with the butter to make the final dough. Lucky for all of us this dough can also be used to make most any sort of Danish. You can also purreé the lot of it, load it into a hypodermic needle and inject it straight to your hips, and butt. Of course, then you won’t get to taste it. So, combine your whole milk and honey, yeast, and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Use the dough hook and add the flour, and salt. Don’t add the salt directly to the liquid or you run the risk of killing all your yeast. Yes, yes, you could call yourself the salt of the earth then, but you’d have to go get more fresh yeast, and you already read how that’s a pain in and of itself. At this point, you just want the dough to come together with a workable consistency. This dough is a rather moist dough, so it should feel like it, but depending on what kind of weather you are having that day, you might need more flour. In my case, I needed significantly more flour just to get the dough to hold together. Keep in mind that you’re going to knead this dough, ever so briefly, and the flour on the board will help to round out the consistency.

Once you have something you can work with, knead it on a board or a countertop for about a minute and then shape into a ball. It’s hard to explain the right technique to do this, but you want the dough to rise evenly, so you need to nurture your dough in order to help it get though puberty. Basically, if you hold your ball of flour and yeast in your hands, you want to give it a facelift. That is, you want to have your thumbs on top of the dough, your fingers underneath and push the bottom of the mass upwards so as to stretch out the top. Remember when you were a kid and you yanked back on your skin to make it look like you were flying through wind at 100 miles per hour? Okay, well, imagine that dough is your face and imagine you can tuck the excess skin back into your skull to continuously tighten your dough’s skin. Was that too weird of an explanation or did people get that?

Anyhow, pop that baby in the fridge, covered, for at least an hour to let it rest and proof a bit. While you’re waiting, get your butter together and pound it into a single thin square, maybe eight inches by eight inches by half and inch thick. It’s not a big deal if it cracks a bit, but you want it in one piece. It’s helpful to leave the butter at room temperature for 15 minutes or so before you try to pound it into the right shape.

Once your dough is rested, take it out of the fridge, and punch it down. You should now have a soft, very pliable dough to roll out twice as long as the butter and a little bit wider. You’re going to put the butter down on one half and fold the other half over the top to seal the butter square into the dough, like closing a book.

Once you’ve done that, pinch the edges together and turn it 90 degrees. After you turn it, roll the dough out once more into a long sheet and fold it together like a letter, into three equal sized overlapping parts. You’ve just made one “turn” of the dough.

Only two more to go, but sorry, you’ve got to wait and hour in between each turn to keep the butter cool and give the dough time to relax and proof some more.

Each time you take the dough out of the fridge, punch down whatever air has accumulated and then roll it out, starting with the former side of the dough. You want the seams of the dough to be facing towards your stomach and have the folds on either side of you. One more important note is to make sure you turn in the same direction each time. So if you pick clockwise, keep turning the dough clockwise. After rolling out the dough each time, fold it up like a letter, and pop it back in the fridge until you’ve done three turns total. After you’re done turning the dough, put it in the fridge overnight to let the dough proof more and develop more flavor.

The next morning, take out what will be a bulging packet of dough from your refrigerator and punch it down. Then, roll out the dough into a very long rectangle that measures about two and a half feet by one and a half feet. Make sure you amply flour your hands, counter, and the dough so it does not stick to anything, including itself. Cut the dough in half lengthwise so you have two very long rectangles.

Stack them one on top of another and cut triangles with a sharp knife, pastry knife, or pizza wheel so the base of each one is 4 to 5 inches wide. Keep in mind that the wider the base is, the wider the croissant will be and the easier they will be to form into their familiar crescent shape.  As you can see, mine weren’t quite as wide as they should have been.

Once you have all the rectangles cut, put a sheet of plastic wrap or a damp towel over them while you roll out and roll up each triangle into the croissant shape. You may have the best luck rolling each triangle out even thinner to create more layers in the final pastry and also to help widen and lengthen the shape of the triangle. You can also cut a slit in the base of the croissant before rolling them to make it easier to curl the ends into a half moon shape.

Once you have rolled and shaped all of your croissants, let them rise at room temperature for a half hour so they puff up in volume a bit. Then, whisk an egg into an egg wash and brush each croissant with the wash. Now, let them sit uncovered for the next half hour, washing them every 10 to 15 minutes to help them form a golden crust in the oven. Now would be a good time to preheat your oven. For a little extra something, I like to sprinkle some maple sugar (not syrup – maple sugar) for an extra level of carmelization and depth of flavor.

Bake your croissants for 16-25 minutes, depending on how you like them, on a half sheet or jelly roll pan. You could do it on a regular old cookie sheet, but remember that big thing of butter you put into the dough? It’s going to start melting and leaking out of the dough in tremendous quantities when it enters the oven and the last thing you need to spoil the smell of yeast, butter, and hard work is scorching fat on the floor of your four and pouring smoke into your kitchen.  You can’t see it very well in this picture below, but there is actually a pool of liquid butter in the corner of the pan.

By this time you’ll know if your efforts have paid off or if you’ve really screwed it up. If you did everything right, your pastry will be puffing nicely in the oven and browning like a champ. You’ll be able to see how flaky and layered your dough is as a result of your masterful turning and the entire house will be saturated with the glorious, overpowering smell of butter and yeast. It will have lured neighbors within a 4 mile radius of your home, and have attracted at least two heads of state. Your friends will be toasting you with their coffee cups and peace will be momentarily declared throughout the world. French chefs everywhere will feel suddenly comforted and that everything is going to be ok. You will have achieved greatness.

Now go, feast on your creations and freeze any you can’t eat fresh within the day. The best way to reheat I’ve found is to put them straightaway from the freezer into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or so. You could defrost them in the fridge if you like, but they’ll be harder to crisp up again. And don’t even think about using the microwave.

Sweet and tart, limoncello is an Italian lemon flavored liqueur produced in the south of Italy, on the Amalfi Coast. If you ever have the pleasure of visiting this idyllic locale, be sure to get the passenger’s seat in the car or the right side of the bus and hold on for dear life. These coasts, just south of Naples, offer some of the most spectacular vistas in Italy if not some of the most perilous driving. On my most recent visit, while careening through the cliff top roads at Italian speeds, our bus suffered a minor accident. While we emerged basically unscathed, our nerves needed a strong drink upon our arrival and seeing how limoncello is native to this region, it was the medicine of choice. Although this beverage is popular throughout Italy, it is, like many Italian specialties, produced in a relatively small part of country; in this case, the Amalfi Coast.

While ripening, the citrus plants sunbathe on terraced cliffs carved into the hills. And while you can see the Island of Capri (pronounced KA-pree not Cuh-pree) in the distance, the terrain is so jagged and rugged here, it feels as though you’re standing in a cluster of tiny islands surrounded on all sides by intensely blue water even when on the mainland.

In the past five years, Limoncello has surpassed all other digestivi as the most popular liqueur throughout most of Italy. This is especially true among younger generations who have developed a penchant for fine dining and quality wines. However, not all limoncello is created equal and its popularity has encouraged scores of impostors throughout the peninsula. From my experience, these should be avoided due to their unnatural sweetness, with the exception of Limonsardi, which is local to the Island of Sardenga.

The Oval of Sorrento

What makes limoncello so spectacular? Well, the lemons for one. Known as the ‘Oval of Sorrento’ this special line of citrus can grow to the size of grapefruits and remain as fragrant as their citrus blossoms. This region is historically known for its citrus farms and according to recent excavations at Pompeii, it is apparent the Italians have grown citrus here since the 1st century, if only for ornamental value.

During the early Middle-Ages, lemons became much more than decorative, as trade with the Arabs taught the inhabitants of the Sorrento Peninsula that lemons could be a powerful protection against scurvy. Now, hundreds of years later, these lemons have adapted to become powerful protection against sobriety. This particular fruit has now adopted the taste of their terroir and taste not much like the industrial lemons we often find in the states, but balance sweet and sour for their own classic flavor. As it grows, the fruit is nurtured by traditional methods. In the groves, trees are held up by wooden poles and trained to grow on a pergola, much like you would see in a rose garden, for example. In addition, growers sometimes use large cane screens to shelter their fruit from getting too much sun. The benefits of this ingenious system is that fruit and flower sets throughout the year.

At a recent tasting I held for NYU Masters Food Studies Students, the class seemed to prefer limoncello with a shot of tonic water, but other great combinations include the use of something bitter like Campari or Amaro.

Limoncello

This recipe was given to me by Duccio Bagnoli, a chef and instructor at Apicius, the Culinary Institute of Florence. If you can’t find the grapefruit sized and intensely fragrant Sorrento Lemons at your local market, pick up large organic Meyer Lemons.

Ingredients:

12 Lemons (unwaxed)

1 Liter Grain alcohol

1.5 Liters Water

700 grams sugar

1. Thoroughly wash your lemons. If they appear to have a waxy substance on them, soak in a tub of water with some vinegar. The vinegar will help remove the wax and any other substances from the skin of the fruit. Rinse with water afterwards.
2. Boil sugar and water to make syrup
3. Remove only the yellow part of the lemon rinds and add to alcohol
4. Add syrup to alcohol mix and let stand for 4 weeks
5. Strain and bottle.
6. Store the finished limoncello in the freezer. Don’t worry, it wont freeze!

Digestivo, the Italian version of the French digestif, is a strong liqueur taken after a meal with the intension of aiding in digestion and settling the stomach. Just like a French eau de vie or Scandinavian aquavit, Italian digestivos are distilled liqueurs. The most popular types of digestivo in Italy are grappa, amaro and limoncello. What’s the point of a digestive you ask? Well, after several antipasti (appetizers usually consisting of salumi – Italian for any type of cured and sliced meats), a primo piatto (first course usually pasta, rice dish or soup), secondo piatto (second course usually a meat dish), a contorno (side dish of vegetables) and dolce (dessert), your stomach needs something to deal with all that food, not to mention the half or even full bottle of wine you consumed. If you ask any Italian, they will claim the digestivo they drink after helps them digest what could be a marathon meal, especially if it’s a Sunday family gathering. Many Italians also drink espresso in this manner, but it’s not really its expressed purpose.

Not Your Frat Brothers’ Grappa

For many, grappa is a putrid, harsh, and clear substance that tastes mainly of liquor and perhaps a little bit of moldy wet sponge. That is mainly because grappa, until recently, was rarely more interesting than cheap vodka. In fact, grappa was historically a peasant’s drink. Under the system of the mezzadria, indentured farmers worked the land and paid their landlords with a portion of their crops which were often vineyards of grapes made into poor, bitter wines. There was no incentive to produce better wine since excess could be consumed or sold at the market.

Grappa is made by distilling the remains from winemaking. After every bit of juice is squeezed out of the grapes for wines, farmers distill the skins, seeds, and pulp of whatever else remains to make a sort of moonshine we know as grappa. Unfortunately, until the recent past, grapes were frequently pressed until mostly all of the juice leaked out. While this was good for volume, if grapes are pressed to hard their skins begin to release very bitter compounds, which in turn makes especially bitter grappa. However, grappa is now experiencing its own Italian Renaissance and with the pivotal 1990 vintage, passed a turning point.

Part of this has come from the better quality wine coming out of Italy. In the past few decades, the Italian wine industry has emerged as a world-class producer with a shrinking portion of the wine made by small-time farmers. The abolition of the mezzadria, increased wine education, and the early success of the Super-Tuscans have all made quality the new focus of many wine producers. And, since grappa from the remains of wine, also known as the pomace, better wine has equaled better grappa.

Perhaps nothing has done more for good grappa than lightly pressed grapes, but that is just the beginning. A new trend in grappa is the distillation of whole grapes, a practice familiar to Cognac producers but not practiced in Italy until recently. These grappas tend to be more full-flavored and of higher-quality than their pomace-produced counterparts. Producers are also becoming more specialized in making grappa. Nonino is well known among grappa lovers for producing the first labeled single variety grappa, or picolit, in 1973. Other producers have since followed this lead and have also experimented with other methods that are traditionally foreign for this rustic drink. Following consumers’ taste for new wood in wine, some grappa is now being aged in oak barriques. I find that the wood generally softens the grappa’s alcohol, making it smoother tasting.

The Connoisseur’s Grappa

If you’re looking to experience grappa for the first time or experience higher quality grappa, here are some suggestions for success. Look for Grappa from Fruili or the Veneto. These regions are in the north of Italy and since the best white grapes are grown in the northeast of Italy and the best grappa is made from white grapes, you’ll have a better chance finding high quality stuff there. Good grappas should taste subtle and smooth and can be quite fruity, floral, or even toasty, depending on the grape varieties and aging method. Excellent grappa can be a complex and refined drink. Like a vino di meditazione they are something to savor and think about.

As far as specific producers go, along with Nonino, I especially love the grappa by Jacopo Poli. A standout from Poli is the wood aged batch he makes especially for the legendary Sassicaia. Besides Fruili and Veneto, good grappa is increasingly being made from quality producers in Tuscany as well. Unlike with olive oil, which has nothing to do with the vineyard, if you like the wine of a particular producer chances are you’ll enjoy their grappa, too. When drinking grappa, you employ the traditional tulip glass, a whiskey glass or even a Cognac sniffer. Or, if your morning espresso just doesn’t cut it for you anymore, ‘correct’ it by sneaking a shot of grappa in, but good luck convincing your coworkers you aren’t an alcoholic!

Seared Scallops on Roast Corn Coulis

The first course, and most successful of the day, was a sea scallop in roasted corn sauce. I particularly like this dish it because it has a richness to it without needing cream or butter. And, if you own a chinois, it takes the sauce to a whole new level of silky unctuousness. Unfortunately for me, as you can see from the picture, I didn’t make near enough of the stuff, so I’ve compensated in the recipe below. It’s extremely easy to make and would be great even without pushing the stuff through a super-fine sieve, but if you do take the time and effort, I’d say you might as well make a double batch to put over eggs, fish, or even braised chicken. I think it would be a welcome impostor for hollandaise sauce on asparagus as well, and certainly better for you.

One important thing to note is that I discovered using bi-color corn just didn’t give me the bright yellow shade I was hoping for, so I recommend you use yellow corn if you can find it. As far as the scallops are concerned, it goes without saying to buy the freshest you can, but in terms of size, I’m not sure it matters so much. People seem to be impressed by large shellfish in general, and I had truly gigantic ones, but I think it would be just as good with smaller ones. I think three might look better on the plate, though you’d have to deal with more objects to sear in your pan.

Seared Scallops on Roast Corn Coulis

Serves 5 as a first course

Ingredients:

10 Large Sea Scallops, an inch and a half in diameter. Use more scallops if they are smaller.

3 Ears of yellow corn.

1 small shallot cut into fine dice

1 small clove garlic, cut into fine slivers

1/3 cup 1% milk, more as needed.

3 plum tomatoes

4-5 sprigs parsley, chopped

3 Tablespoons olive oil, divided

For the Roast Corn Coulis

1. Turn your oven to 350 degrees and roast the corn, unshucked, for 20 minutes.
2. While the corn is roasting, dice your shallot and garlic. While the mixture will be puréed, you want the vegetables to be small enough so they cook in a matter of seconds.
3. When the corn is ready, carefully peel back the husk and remove the silk. Then, using a sharp knife, slice the kernels from the cob into a bowl.
4. Put a skillet large enough to hold all the corn over high heat with half the olive oil and when the oil shimmers sauté the corn until it gives up some of its water and begins to just slightly brown on the edges of the kernels. This would be a good time to season with salt and pepper.
5. When the corn is ready, add the shallot and garlic to the pan and cook for another 30 seconds, tossing to combine.
6. Take the pan off the heat and immediately deglaze with the milk, scraping up any browned bits.
7. Put the corn mixture into a blender and purée as fine as possible. If the mixture looks too dry, add more milk, or enrich with cream if you desire.
8. If you want, force the purée through a fine sieve or chinois.

For the Tomatoes:

1. Cut the tomatoes in half and seed them. Season the tomatoes with salt on their insides and dry with paper towel after 10 minutes or so when the salt has pulled some of the water from them.
2. Cut the tomatoes into a small dice and toss with the chopped parsley. Season with pepper.

For the Scallops:

1. Pat scallops dry and season with salt and pepper just before cooking so the salt does not pull water from the scallop and make them wet on top again.
2. Heat two tablespoons of safflower or peanut oil over high heat until it shimmers. Olive oil is ok, but it will smoke profusely.
3. Sear the scallops on both sides until just cooked through, 3-5 minutes.

Herbed Gnocchi with Shrimp and Peas

In New York, no one has fresher shrimp that I’ve seen than Leonard’s. You’ll pay through the nose for it, but the shrimp is so fresh it’s still an orangey-pink color when raw. I think the Lobster Place probably has next best quality in the city and their prices are lower and if you don’t live near Chelsea Market, try to get to a Citarella, which is the next best and of very high quality in my opinion.

There’s no doubt that this dish is a good deal of work, but the gnocchi you can make the day before and the rest of it comes together pretty quickly after that. You could use store bought gnocchi, but it’s much better to use homemade and it’s the only way you’ll get herbs inside your dumplings, and isn’t that all anyone really wants in this world? My initial reaction to my preparation is that I should have removed just the shrimp from the marinade and left the veggies and herbs in the marinade with the marinade. I think all the junk in the dish just makes it look messy and since the shrimp soak up all the flavors anyhow, you might as well go for clean presentation. I also think it would have been a bit better on the presentation side if the shrimp were chopped up a bit to mix in with the rest of the smaller ingredients better, not to mention a bit more manageable for guests.

Herbed Gnocchi with Shrimp and Peas

Serves 5 as a second course

Ingredients:

3/4 pound peeled and de-veined shrimp

2 small scallions

1 sprig rosemary

2 sprigs parsley

2/3 cup olive oil, divided

1 cup fresh English shelling peas

For the Gnocchi

1 cup flour

.75 cup water

2 teaspoons salt

6 Tablespoons butter

1.5 teaspoons tarragon

1.5 teaspoons parsley

1.5 teaspoons chervil

1.5 teaspoons chives

½ cup shredded Comte or Emmentaler cheese

3 large eggs

For the Gnocchi:

This is best made the day before because it is an event in and of itself. This recipe is adapted from Thomas Keller, and you can find the original at Gourmet Magazine’s main site. Once you’ve made it, I think you’ll agree the tiny feather soft pillows of herb flavor are worth it. The first step in this process is simply making pate à choux, a common French concoction responsible for éclairs, profiteroles, gougères, and many other poofed things, but not to be confused with puff pastry, the foundation of croissant and such. If you have never made anything with pate à choux, this recipe is worth making just for the experience. Lots of cookbooks have recipes based on the process and once you master the process you’ve got a base you can use to throw together and handful of unique snacks that have an upscale tone about them. It’ll feel strange to do this if you’ve never done it before, but it is simple even if you do need to be on top of your game to make it happen right. Let’s say that again for the people in the back – with this recipe it is important to work quickly, as the dough will become sticky and firm up as it cools.

1. Finely chop all the herbs and combine. Grate the cheese and set aside.
2. Combine the water, butter, and salt in a large saucepan.
3. When the butter melts, add all the flour and stir rapidly with a wooden spoon until the mixture becomes a glistening paste. Continue to cook over medium heat, lowering if necessary to prevent browning until a skin forms on the bottom of the pan. The mixture will start to steam and you’ll notice an aroma of cooked flour. If you’re stuffy that day, pull off a piece and (careful! It’s hot!) try some. If it tastes like flour keep cooking, if it tastes more like butter dough, you’re ready.
   
4. Drop the dough into the bowl of a mixer fit with the paddle attachment. You don’t have to use the mixer, but the dough will become very difficult to work and you need to mix it quickly in the next steps. If you do decide to work the dough by hand, choke up on the spoon so you’re holding it at its neck to give you more leverage.
5. Add the herbs and a pinch of salt and mix rapidly for 30 seconds or so. A cloud of steam will come off the dough whereupon you can add the cheese and continue mixing until incorporated, another minute or so.
6. Add your eggs one at a time to the mix, fully incorporating each one before adding the next until the dough is smooth and hangs off the wooden spoon with impressive grip.

7. Put the dough in a pastry bag fitted with a large tip or a Ziploc bag and let the dough sit at room temperature for a half hour. Then, put your dough in the fridge for a half hour or so at least to let it firm up. If you neglect this step, you may find yourself with herbed falling apart mush when you try and cook it.For the Shrimp

1. Marinate the shrimp with half the olive oil, scallions, herbs, and crushed red pepper for two hours or overnight in the refrigerator

Put it Together

1. Boil some heavily salted water in a small saucepan. Shell the peas while you are waiting and then add to the pot and blanch until tender, 2-3 minutes.
2. When the peas are ready strain and run them under cold water or shock them in an ice bath.
3. Remove the shrimp from the marinade and brush off any veggies still sticking to them.
4. Chop the shrimp into large pieces and put in a cold skillet.
5. Boil a pot of salted water
6. Pipe the gnocchi mixture into the water, cutting pieces as you go with a knife to leave little dumpling sized morsels. Go as quickly as you can and get close to the water so you don’t get splashed. High diving gnocchi only do cannonballs, capice?
7. When the gnocchi start to float, turn the skillet with the shrimp to high heat and give the gnocchi another minute.
8. Take the gnocchi from the water with a large slotted spoon and add to the skillet with the shrimp. You do not want to spend all day transferring the gnocchi. Do it quickly or your shrimp will overcook.
9. At the instant the shrimp begin to turn color, take the pan off the heat. The heat left in the gnocchi and the pan will cook them the rest of the way.
10. Add the peas to the mixture and plate.

I am entirely convinced that there is something magical about water, eggs, flour, and salt. From these four little ingredients what wonders emerge! It is only fitting that one of my favorite foods, pasta, is made from them. However, as most cooks know, recipes with few ingredients can be deceiving in their difficulty. In fact, I’m not sure I can imagine a simpler food with a more difficult recipe than bread. If you’ve never made bread, you might ask, “what kind of idiot can’t handle yeast, water, flour and salt?” But I tell you I could build a house with all the wheat bricks I’ve pulled from my oven. So it’s only natural that the concept of making pasta from scratch strikes great fear into me. After all, pasta is nothing more than flour and eggs, right? Could anything be more frightening?

As it turns out, it’s not so bad as long as you don’t try and learn it from a book. Pasta making, like bread making, is not taught so much as passed down. After taking one evening class at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York, I’ve hardly had anything passed down to me, though I can say it set me on the right path. I’ve found that being an amateur cook, the most important thing you can do for yourself in a general sense is cultivate some instincts, and spending a few hours with an experienced pasta chef gave me a good sense of what it should look like, what it should feel like, how long to do this, how long to do that, and so on.

So I started this afternoon with much excitement. I pulled my eBay sourced Atlas 150 Macchina Per Pasta from it’s worn box with a large grin, got the flour from the cupboard and eggs from the fridge. According to Peter Berley, the chef at ICE, you should think of pasta servings in terms of eggs, not flour. As a general rule, one egg per serving is about right and if you use three eggs, you should expect to use around 2 cups of flour, though it always depends on the size of your eggs. One week I used almost all two cups and the next week I only needed about a cup and a quarter. It can really vary, so don’t feel compelled to use wet dough or force ever last grain into your poor eggs. I used three eggs, whites and all in my experiment today, but I’ve heard of restaurants using wacky combinations like one egg and eight yolks per pound of flour, or even putting a tablespoon of olive oil and sugar into each 50 pound bag of flour before they start making the pasta. My guess is whatever chef came up with that combination probably has some manner of twitch about him, but who am I to judge?

Anyhow, in a bowl, make a well in your flour and crack your eggs into the well. Then, using a fork, break up the yolks and begin to gradually pull in flour from the sides of the well into the egg mixture until it begins to form a dough and hold onto the fork.

At this point, get some flour on your hands and flour a wooden board. Lift the ball of dough out of the bowl and place on the board. Now, sift whatever is left in the bowl through a fine mesh colander or pitch it entirely if you don’t have one of those. The reason being is that in the remaining flour there are lots of bits and pieces of dough which you don’t want. They’re so dry they’re practically corn flakes and frankly, I’m not sure I like their attitude or their haircut. Plus trying to get those suckers into your dough will just be a headache later on down the road. It’s just flour and eggs people – you can’t pitch some?

So, working with the dough you want to continue to work flour into it until it is firm enough to knead. You’ll still need lots more flour, but begin to knead the dough by pushing your palm down and away from you into the dough. Use some elbow grease for it and rotate it slightly each time you press down so you’re folding the thing in on itself. Remember to press into the dough and away from your body at the same time; pushing down is just going to make the dough rip eventually.

If you’ve ever made bread you know that you don’t want too much flour in your dough or it will become dense, gummy, and hard as a rock when you bake it. Ignore such instincts with your pasta making. You want the dough to be really firm so it resists any attempt to flatten it or stretch it, so that later, once it has relaxed, it will be the right firmness to roll out into wonderous, leathery sheets. The whole kneading process should take you maybe eight to ten minutes. After that, and this is critical, form your dough into a ball and cover it with plastic wrap for a half hour or so. You need to give the gluten time to relax and you’ll know it’s ready when you can push your finger into the dough and it leaves a kind of belly button indent and doesn’t push it back out like it would if you were to push your finger in now. Chef Berly says it should have the texture of your ear lobe once its rested.

Once you’re all rested up, cut a piece of dough about half the size of your fist if you’re using a small pasta machine like I have, and pound it into a flat rectangle shaped thing. This is just to help get it flat enough to have the machine take it.

On the widest setting, roll the dough through the machine and give it a steady tug as it comes out the other side, so you’re almost pulling it out. You don’t want to tear it and you’ll need to be progressively gentler the thinner you roll it, but the dough needs to stretch.

If you need to, fold the resulting rolled sheet, called a sfoglia, like a business letter, and run it through the machine on the widest setting so the folds are perpendicular to the rollers. You want the dough to go through on what was its side so that it evens out into more of a rectangle and not an oval or something. You might need to do this a couple times to get it into a good shape. Then, roll it thinner and thinner until it’s on the last setting or second to last setting for a thicker, more rustic size. Make sure to sprinkle the dough all along the way with more flour so it keeps a leather, rubber band-like texture. It should feel very dry on your hands but pliable.

At this point, you can fold the dough up and cut into strands, roll it though your linguine or spaghetti cutters that came with your machine, or just make lasagna from your sfoglias. You could also lay one sheet down, place some fresh herbs or thinly sliced truffles down, lay another sheet down on top of all that and seal with a bit of water before rolling it through again for a “printed” look. I’ve never tried this myself but 101 cookbooks did a segment on it and I got the idea for the truffles out of the Boulevard Cookbook. They both look quite good and I’m excited to try the process soon.

I cut my pasta into papardelle today, which are just really wide pieces of linguine and well known in Tuscany. Usually you see this kind of pasta with a Bolognese Sauce in American restaurants, but the traditional Italian way is “papardelle con cinghiale”, which is a hearty ragú made from wild boar (cinghale). Wild boar is rather plentiful in Central Park, and now and again I walk in with a big shotgun to take me down some cignhiale, but it’s really more of a fall sport, so I opted for a more spring preparation of English shelling peas, mint, and Parmesan. The recipe is below. I also served this with some roasted heirloom carrots from the farmer’s market that were purple. They added a nice sweetness to the dish, which was needed because my peas were not as fresh as they should have been. My friend Adina also brought over a nice 2004 Pouilly Fumé which was very nice indeed with our meal.

Pappardelle with Spring Peas and Mint

Serves 4

Make a 4-egg batch of fresh pasta, as detailed above.

1 cup fresh-shelled peas

1 tablespoon fresh mint

2 tablespoons fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley

2 cloves green garlic or 1 clove regular garlic

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup fresh grated parmesano reggiano

1. Shell your peas and blanch them in a quart of salted, boiling water for 2 minutes or until tender and bright green. Drain and rinse with cold water or plunge into ice water to stop the cooking.
2. Finely slice the garlic into thin wafers and set aside.
3. Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water. Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium heat in a large skillet until the foam begins to subside and it smells of nuts.
4. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it slightly from the water. Add the sliced garlic to the butter and cook for 30 seconds before adding the pasta to the pan. Add the blanched peas, parsley and mint, and toss to combine over the heat. Remove from heat immediately and plate, placing a mound of Parmesan on top of each serving of pasta. Grind fresh pepper on top to taste.

The life of a stumbling epicure is fraught with ordeal. Namely, we have little money, poor facilities, and are largely inexperienced amateur hacks in all cases of connoisseurship. Well, perhaps it’s not quite that awful a situation, in fact we do know a thing or two about a thing or two, but we’ve got a long way to go. So here you are, at the epicenter of our never-ending culinary boot camp where we hope to document for your viewing pleasure all the events in our gastronomic lives from fallen soufflé to triumphant crown roast of spring lamb. At least, hopefully the cost of ingredients to success ratio is close to that.

This summer Franz is in Berlin, Joey is in Italy, and Ben is in New York City. Check back soon for more updates as strawberries arrived at the NYC Greenmarkets last week and we’ll have lots more to post.

Cheers,
Ben