1.09.2014

Fresh Pasta and Vegetarian-Friendly Carbonara

Though this winter has been particularly brutal, leaving me to almost exclusively hibernate, I've awoken from my slumber to cook because obviously I require delicious noms in my life. After a trip to Eataly during its opening week (yikes!), I decided it was time to finally make my own pasta from scratch. When I spotted powder-fine "00" flour lining the shelves I excitedly picked some up.


I found a lot of varied recipes online. It seems most people's ratios differ, which lead me to believe there's basically no wrong way to make pasta (if there are any Italians or pasta aficionados reading, please don't kill me for saying that!). I finally settled on fettuccine's ratio of one egg for every 100g of flour. Four eggs, 200g of all-purpose flour, 200g of doppio zero flour and a pinch of salt later...


Too scared of making an eggy-flour mess of my counter/kitchen/entire life, I decided to use my stand mixer. This was where things went a little wrong. I didn't get to feel the dough in my hands as it was forming, and allowed my mixer to run until all of my flour was incorporated. Needless to say, it ended up drier than I'd hoped.



After kneading for what felt like forever, and then kneading some more, the gluten was sufficiently stretched, the dough had a nice elasticity to it, and most air bubbles were squished out. We all took a short 30 minute nap then got to rolling! I don't own a pasta rolling machine so Andrew and I went old-school and took turns using a rolling pin and patience. Now that took forever.


So what did we do with all of that pasta? Vegetarian carbonara! Replacing pancetta with halloumi, which I pan fried with garlic, shallots, and a bit of white wine, was pretty much the best food decision I've ever made.


I can't even tell you how deliciously creamy and salty all of this was when combined with the Parmesan and Pecorino Romano. I freshened up the whole thing a bit by adding a squeeze of lemon and a small amount of lemon zest at the end. The pasta itself had a great bite to it and only took, like, 4-5 minutes to cook.

Moral of the story: Pasta isn't that difficult to make and my love for halloumi knows absolutely no bounds.

12 comments:

  1. Oh, I am super looking forward to Eataly at the end of the month!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We have an Eataly here in New York..I've been there maybe twice..love to go just to browse..they have some amazing foods there...next time you're in town..we'll go....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's kind of overwhelming, isn't it? The one here is huge (63,000 sqft) and during its opening week was pure chaos. That's actually where I found the Carmencita coffeemaker I sent you a photo of! I totally want to see what the NY one is like. There's never enough time when I visit!

      Delete
  3. Eataly was pretty fun. I would go back again. BTW the pasta carbonara in this post was AMAZING.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AHHH this looks so super tasty! I tried making pasta (ravioli) a few years ago and it was a thick disaster so I've been letting the local pasta co. make my fresh stuff. :) This recipe looks awesome- I love salty, lemony pasta!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, no! You have to give it another try! I doubt I'll be making any before getting a pasta attachment for my stand mixer because the work out for relatively thin pasta was too much. The end result was so good though. Totally worth the effort!

      Delete
  5. Wow, looks amazing, I'm gonna give it a try ;D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You should! This is a pretty easy tutorial on how to make fresh pasta from scratch: http://bit.ly/1c5QvSn. You'll just need to roll your dough out like Andrew and I did, using a pin. Let me know how it goes!

      Delete
  6. Hi! Just discovered your blog and I already enjoyed the first few posts. I just got a pasta maker so I've been thrilled with all the fresh pasta in my life.

    Just one little note: parmesan contains rennet which isn't a vegetarian friendly ingredient as it's an animal product.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for reading! I don't police other people's diets and simply share what I make for myself and my family. This also wasn't a recipe. Had it been, you, or anyone else, could modify it to suit your needs by buying whatever brands work for you. Since you brought it up though, I used BelGioioso which is, in fact, vegetarian parm.

      Delete

Thanks for commenting! I always love hearing from readers! ♥