Cycle 3 – Item 324

24 (Sat) November 2012

Italian Pasta Fresca alla Ragù

3.5

by me

at home

-Oksu, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-

with W and DJ

Project 30/30/30: 24 of 45 (see also 45/45/45)

Throughout this November, I am challenging myself to eat 30 dishes from 30 countries over the course of 30 consecutive days.

Italy is the 24th country.

So long as I was doing Italy at home, I wanted to make it count, so I made fresh pasta for the first time.  The dough itself was simple enough, just flour, egg yolk, water, olive oil, and salt.  For added authenticity, I used durum semolina recently acquired at great expense for this very purpose.  Everything was initially pulsed in a food processor, then kneaded by hand to the proper consistency, and set aside for an hour.

The lack of a pasta maker forced me to roll out the dough with a pin, which was such a literal pain that I gave up before achieving the desired degree of uniform thickness.

By that point, no longer too concerned with uniform width, I cut the sheets roughly into strands of varying sizes, some like linguine, others like fettuccine.

Meanwhile, I prepared my signature ragù, because I had a basketful of tomatoes and a bowlful of ground pork and beef that needed using, even though I would’ve preferred something more subtle to allow the pasta itself to shine.

No need to worry, the pasta shone just fine.  The flour made it luxuriously soft yet fiercely chewy, a mouthfeel impossible to attain in dry pasta, even if cooked to perfect al dente.  And the random noodle dimensions, both in thickness and width, provided each bite with a sense of surprise from the textural unpredictability.  DJ took one bite and asked, “Daddy, what is this?!?!”

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)