Happy Labor Day, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend – I’ve got chicken stock burbling on the stove and a disc of pie dough resting in the fridge, so I figure I’ve "labored" enough for today. That means it’s time to settle in and recap our recent easy, breezy pasta event!
Shawn and Meg were up for August – a truly serendipitous
time to host, to be sure. Fresh tomatoes had finally arrived in Seattle, and
other summertime delights were abundant. Shawn and Meg reasoned that the
weather was far too nice to work any harder than we had to, and they decided to
keep the “easy, breezy” theme that Joyce and Damian had begun in July.
And so it was.
Shawn and Fernando were proud new owners of a pasta machine,
a fine Italian model which was passed on to them by Joyce and Jessica, who
found it (and a drying rack, w00t!) languishing at a garage sale, desperately
in need of a better home. As such, Shawn couldn’t wait to try her hand at
preparing fresh pasta – purported to be far superior to the store-bought kind
and really easy to make, to boot.
But that isn’t the whole story.The back-story of the mania surrounding this pasta machine
in the White-Caballero household is this:
A couple of months prior, Joyce and Jessica had already surprised Shawn with another pasta machine they’d found at another garage sale. Shawn proudly tucked the box under her arm and headed off to the bus stop with it. When she sat the pasta machine down on the newspaper box to consult the bus schedule, she had a “Holy shit!” moment when she realized that the bus would be passing in just a couple of minutes. Shawn dashed down the stairs into the bus tunnel before stopping short at the bottom of the first flight. Her “Holy shit!” moment became a “HOLY SHIT!!!” moment as she remembered her new pasta machine, sitting forlornly atop the newspaper box up at the street level where she’d forgotten it in her haste to catch the bus.
A couple of months prior, Joyce and Jessica had already surprised Shawn with another pasta machine they’d found at another garage sale. Shawn proudly tucked the box under her arm and headed off to the bus stop with it. When she sat the pasta machine down on the newspaper box to consult the bus schedule, she had a “Holy shit!” moment when she realized that the bus would be passing in just a couple of minutes. Shawn dashed down the stairs into the bus tunnel before stopping short at the bottom of the first flight. Her “Holy shit!” moment became a “HOLY SHIT!!!” moment as she remembered her new pasta machine, sitting forlornly atop the newspaper box up at the street level where she’d forgotten it in her haste to catch the bus.
Only a minute or two had passed, so Shawn tore up the stairs from the bus tunnel in a whirlwind, and hurled herself around the
corner towards said newspaper box. Nothing. No pasta machine. Desperately,
Shawn looked up the street and down the street…she looked across the street and
all around…Shawn trotted up and down a two-block radius of the newspaper box,
peeping into every garbage can and scrutinizing every bulky package carried by
every now-suspicious-looking fellow citizen.
Fruitlessly, Shawn returned again and again to the newspaper box, hoping against all hope that the pasta machine might magically re-appear there, that whoever had picked it up might have realized that it wasn’t anything of value in the drug market and wouldn’t likely be easy to sell on the street, and returned it to where they’d found it.
Fruitlessly, Shawn returned again and again to the newspaper box, hoping against all hope that the pasta machine might magically re-appear there, that whoever had picked it up might have realized that it wasn’t anything of value in the drug market and wouldn’t likely be easy to sell on the street, and returned it to where they’d found it.
Alas, it was not to be.
Shawn’s extreme disappointment was as intense as the
level of excitement she’d felt upon hefting the pasta machine’s box’s cold
metal contents and contemplating fresh pasta in her near future. Major bummer.
So, as you may surmise, gentle reader, with the arrival of
a brand new garage-sale pasta machine and a call to host an easy dinner for
Kiss the Cooks, little doubt remained about what would be on the menu for
August. Plus, Meg sensibly reasoned, it had been a long time since folks had
made pasta. It was high time.
So the fateful August day rolled around, and it was a
beauty. Shawn and bonus helper Fernando arrived at Meg's place a couple of hours early to
prepare “everything but.” The idea was to really focus on pasta-making technique,
and to do that, the amount of other dinner-related tasks which needed to be completed had to
be minimized. So, Meg, Shawn, and Fernando got to work.
Fernando grated over FIFTEEN POUNDS of tomatoes into Meg’s Dutch
oven. They barely fit! We put them on the stove to cook down…
Meanwhile, Meg prepared fresh pesto (OMG SO summery!). She
threw a mélange of basil, parmesan cheese, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, lemon juice, and
salt and pepper together in the food processor, and voilà! Meg weighed in with tips
on improvising a perfect pesto:
"Pesto:
I add some lemon juice. Walnuts are a decent substitute for pine nuts if you
don’t have enough and need to supplement, or if you just want to make it with
walnuts instead. Other fun additives: a few leaves of arugula, parsley,
cilantro, sorrel or dandelions!" ~Meg Olsen, Pesto-Maker Extraordinaire
Next, Shawn and Meg assembled some pre-dinner snacks. Behold
Meg’s special appetizer platter: the famous Pure Food Fish Market’s smoked salmon, Kerrygold’s Dubliner cheese, and Seattle’s own La Panzanella’s Croccantini:
Shawn prepped salad ingredients and threw together her
newest snack discovery for unexpected guests, goat cheese with cocoa nibs andsalt:
Then we got down to the important stuff: Cocktails.
In honor of the summertime weather and the joy-inspiring
presence of the world-famous “Holy Shit!” peaches (*see what I did there?) at Sosio's in the Pike Market, we decided to go big with Peach-Thyme Bellinis.
A dab of thyme-infused peach puree…
In short order, Damian and Frank arrived. Frank relaxed with
a bellini and got ready for a long evening of pasta-making.
Damian and Meg went out to visit “the girls” in Coop Arcadia…
And here they are—or some of them, anyway! These gals
(clockwise from top, I think they are: Grace Hopper, Marilyn, and either Hanna or Banna), are
responsible for the gloriously orange-yolked eggs we were to use in our pasta.
Meanwhile, inside, Joyce had arrived (sans Jessica, who was
in Boston for the weekend…We missed you!). Laden with countless bags and
bundles, she looked like a movie star after a day full of shopping. Here,
Fernando helps her unload…
Rick and Anne were on their way, and there wasn’t much to do
while we were waiting on their arrival, so the rest of the gang actually sat
around and visited over cocktails and snacks. Yes, folks, you read that right.
Visited. Over cocktails. Sitting down. And actually looking at one another. It
was heavenly!
First step: Measure or weigh out the flour we’d use, mound
it into mountain shape (either in a bowl or on a floured surface), and create a
small well into which to put the eggs. Meg had dutifully been saving her
chickens’ eggs all week for this special occasion, and the girls definitely did
NOT disappoint. Look at the color of those yolks!
In the Pioneer Woman’s blog post, I grinned when I read that
her husband’s great-great grandmother created all her baked goods using the “crack
eggs into a well in the flour” technique, and that she usually carried out this
task directly in the flour bin! I can’t wait until I’m enough of a pasta-making
rock star to do that at my house!
The next step after cracking the eggs into the flour well is
to lightly mix them right in the well. Shawn and Meg shared a giggle that they’d
both independently decided to clip down their fingernails to “extra-short”
status for ease of dough-kneading. Good thing they did, too, because this was
sticky stuff!
Here’s Fernando’s still-shaggy dough. He still needs to
knead a while to develop the gluten properly to have a smooth, stretchy dough.
Shawn’s pasta dough is taking shape…
Ta-daaa! Damian has incorporated all the flour into his
disc, and he’s ready to work the dough a while.
Here’s a snapshot of the hard work and concentration
involved in making pasta for a group from scratch:
Joyce was up first. She cut her dough into fourths and began
feeding it through the pasta machine. You start on the lowest setting (0 or 1)
and pass the dough through the pasta roller one time. Then, you fold that piece
into thirds and pass it through once or twice more on the same setting. Next,
you pass the dough once through the next-smallest setting, and repeat, progressively
changing the setting, until the dough strip is as thin as you want it.
Next, you pass the thin strip through the pasta cutter – we decided
to stick with fettucini-syle noodles. Here’s Joyce with our first batch of the
night!
Anne and Frank worked well as a lean, mean, pasta-rolling
machine…
Want to see it live? Here’s a video of those two crazy cats
in the midst of pasta-making action! Note: we didn't actually make linguine, as Shawn mistakenly reports in the video...
As we cut the pasta strips, we tossed them in a bit of flour
to keep them from sticking.
This seemed like a less-than-ideal method for the amount of
pasta we’d need to make, so Rick had a great idea. He jury-rigged a curtain rod
to use for drying our pasta, and it worked like a dream!
Wow!
By the end of it, we’d run out of room on the drapery
rod/drying rack, and “recycled” space. Once the drying pasta finished drying,
we offloaded it onto a baking sheet and replaced it with fresh pasta on the
rod.
We tried the angel-hair setting (see the teensy pile at the
back?), but determined it needed to be cut after passing through the
second-to-last setting on the pasta machine. Otherwise, it was too thin to cut
cleanly on that setting. Still, it looked pretty!
The sauce had cooked down, and Meg finished seasoning it. Someone
set the table. The sorbet was already in the freezer. Shawn put the finishing
touches on an all-green salad. It was nearly time to eat.
Then, something REALLY bizarre occurred. It was unlike any
prior Kiss the Cooks meeting we’d ever experienced. All of a sudden, as we sipped our glasses of wine, it hit us:
There. Was. Nothing. To. Do.
That’s right. Nothing to do. Meg and Shawn had pre-prepped
to the point that we literally found ourselves in a small window of time during
which there were no tasks to complete. We only had to wait for the pasta water to
boil, and no quantity of eyes watching over the pot were going to make that necessary step occur any
faster.
It took a few minutes for the gravity of the
situation to sink in. So, we did the only responsible and ethical thing: We
chilled the @!#&%; out for a little while. That’s right, folks, for the
SECOND time in the same evening at a KTC event, we VISITED with each other.
Twice. In the same night. NOT ONLY THAT, but we did so while we enjoyed Meg’s
incredibly welcoming front porch, the balmy summer evening, and the triumphant sense of a
job well-done.
There was no frenzied race to get everything plated. There
was no easing of exhausted weary bones into our chairs at the dining table. We
were fresh and smiling and taking time to relax – a perfect way to prepare for
a wonderful summer dinner, and perfectly in-keeping with our easy, breezy theme
of the night!
We admired Meg’s cool hanging planter…
Fernando supervised the relaxation…
Rick and Damian cracked jokes about blending in with the
chairs and how funny it was that they were dressed in the same colors…
After we sat a spell, it was time for dinner!
Salad first. Meg and Shawn thought it would be fun to create
a monochromatic salad. It’s all green: Lettuce, Castelvestrano olives, cucumber,
parsley, avocado, kiwi, pistaschios…It was really delicious.
Here’s a close-up. Doesn’t that look amazing?
As folks were finishing up their salads, Shawn and Meg got
the pasta on to boil. The pasta cooked in no time flat, and there was a ton of
it to boil. In typical good KTC sense, instead of dumping the pasta water after
each batch, Meg and Shawn deftly fished out the cooked pasta from the water.
Half the pasta was tossed with the tomato sauce…
And the other half was tossed with pesto…
And plated up to serve, it looked like this! The texture was simply heavenly. Yum!
Dinner was just as relaxed an affair as our pre-dinner time
had been, and we had a lovely evening. Joyce serenaded us with what appears to
be a popular country music song these days, Brad Paisley’s “Ticks.” It was a
scream. Here’s Joyce’s (kind of dark) performance, followed by Brad Paisley’s version. Which
do you prefer?
Before too long, our plates looked like this:
In spite of the volume of pasta served to everyone, surprisingly,
eating that much pasta didn’t feel heavy. We kicked around theories about why
that might be—perhaps the thinness with which we rolled it out made the
difference. Perhaps being extra-fresh made the difference. As for me, I think
the secret is in Meg’s sassy hens’ eggs.
Dessert was up next. The photo of the sorbet doesn’t do it
justice- it was a very grown-up version of peach sorbet, spiked with a bit of
Grand Marnier. The crunchy Linzer-style cookies had chewy ginger bits mixed in with ground
hazelnuts, so were a nice contrast to the smooth sorbet.
We finished up with a nice glass of Porto…or two!
What a wonderful dinner!
So that’s it. Another rousing success of food, fun, fellowship,
and flour at KTC! SOOO delicious, and so cool to make pasta!
Upcoming KTC event news: Fernando switched dates for
September with Frank and Anne – so we’ll be planning to hear from Frank and
Anne about our upcoming meeting on September 17th. Fernando will plan a meal for
our October visit to Lopez Island – coming soon on October 15th. (William, do
you have any idea about what the kitchen is equipped with? Also, is there a
grill?) We’ll also be talking about our collective holiday plans over the next
several weeks, including our annual business meeting and holiday cookie bake.
Meg’s cats never showed their faces, but lucky for all of
us, ET did pay a visit. Or, was it Mother Teresa of Calcutta? Either way, the
message is what’s important:
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