Fun With Carbs

It’s times like these when I think I must be the worst food blogger ever. Other bloggers diligently stage and photograph every step of their recipe, complete with a beautiful final shot. Me? I take a picture of a bag of flour, because that’s all that’s left of our weekend pasta extravaganza.

We were finally ready to debut our beginner pasta to the world – meaning, our good friends. So we invited them over for Sunday dinner: varied ravioli and fettuccine with three scratch-made sauces (San Marzano tomato, Alfredo, fresh pesto); homemade ricotta; garlic bread and salad.

Even for four of us, it was a serious undertaking. I got ambitious and planned three ravioli fillings: pumpkin with ricotta and mascarpone; four-cheese and meat. Then it became a matter of mathematics. How many ravioli per person? What if the pumpkin is more popular than the others? Do we have enough pasta dough to do it all?

Luckily, the two of us have been cooking together so long that we fell into our normal roles. Rob, the one who appreciates precision and attention to detail, got to work on the dough. (The flour was actually a pre-dinner gift from our guests, who brought it home from Eataly.)

And because I shy away from anything that requires exact measurements, I whipped up the ravioli fillings. The first, a blend of canned pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, mascarpone, ricotta and some sauteed garlic and shallots. The second, a mixture of ricotta, mascarpone, parmesan, mozzarella and snippets of fresh basil. The third, cooked ground sirloin mixed with some of the leftover cheese filling for a little bit of a binder.

Add in a batch of fresh fettuccine (easily the best and lightest Rob has ever made) and we had ourselves a feast. Four and a half bottles of red wine disappeared in the blink of an eye. The guys enjoyed post-meal cigars and bourbon out on the deck.

As an aside, here’s my secret to making good ravioli: crank some good music. It helps the tedium. My choice for this round? Snoop Dogg.

Yes, my sense of humor is puerile. But just look at this photo.

Oh…how’d it taste?

Good, very good. After a few unfortunate topples (notice the char on the right leg) the chicken stayed up and cooked through nicely. We used Sam Adams Pale Ale and a coffee-infused spice rub that my parents brought back from Hawaii. When the chicken came out, we basted it with the leftover beer.

I’m getting more comfortable with preparing whole chickens. While I’ve been defaulting to traditional roasting methods, I’d like to work on different recipes. Namely, Peruvian-style roast chicken with citrus and garlic, which we tried at Cora Cora in West Hartford earlier this month.

Favorite whole-chicken recipes? Go.

Yesterday I woke up, saw the rain hitting the window, and decided I wasn’t going to do anything more strenuous than operating my stand mixer.

The mixer itself got quite the workout, between a large loaf of French bread and a thrown-together (yet delicious) chocolate buttermilk cake. But it was the sublime batch of fresh fettuccine, courtesy of Rob, that made the night.

We decided to keep the sauce simple, tossing the pasta with sauteed garlic and shallots, good olive oil, lemon juice, white wine, roasted local heirloom tomatoes and zucchini. The silky, light-as-air fettuccine spoke for itself.

I HATE this shit. Granted, I am immediately turned off by any condescending, patronizing attempts to market to females (love Bethenny Frankel, but ‘Skinnygirl margarita?’ Come on.) So this tweet by the Cooking Channel grabbed my wary eye right away.

The “girl burger” in question was, in fact, not a burger. No, it’s nothing more than a pile of grilled vegetables and goat cheese on a ciabatta roll. So let’s just call it what it is: A VEGETABLE SANDWICH. (I’m surprised it didn’t come on scooped-out bread, or wrapped in a lettuce leaf. Carbs are EVIL.)

Certainly, I wasn’t offended by the recipe itself. It actually looked pretty good. What got the rage flowing was the implication that women don’t eat beef burgers. That we’re all watching our figures. That it’s unladylike to order “man food.” That a large, traditional burger would somehow eclipse our femininity, as we’re expected to remain dainty.

There’s a reason I don’t read traditional women’s magazines, with their contradicting (and insulting) “life advice” about diets and trying to snag a man. And I really didn’t appreciate the spillover into my daily food media consumption.

What’s that, Cooking Channel? I can’t hear you. I’m ripping into my own “Girl Burger” – this bloody masterpiece from MC Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine.

Here’s the definition of “fun with carbs.” Pictured here is our first attempt at fresh pasta. Pretty nice, right?

My parents got me a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with pasta attachment for my 30th birthday. And even though the big day isn’t until this coming Saturday, we couldn’t wait to test out the shiny new toy.

An impromptu purchase at the lobster tank (hey, they were $5.99 a pound) gave me visions of lobster ravioli. Rob, who loves pasta even more than ketchup (imagine that) had his sights on handmade fettuccine.

I left the pasta dough-making task to him, as he’s the only one who can handle precision-required cooking projects with patience and grace. Meanwhile, I shelled the lobsters, suffering a couple of small puncture wounds on my fingertips in the process. But it was worth it – two lobsters yielded enough meat to dominate the ravioli filling, plus plenty more large chunks to top the pasta (and a good amount left over for a future meal.)

My filling blended lobster meat with ricotta, pecorino romano, roasted garlic and fresh chives, with some cracked black pepper, lemon juice and a few teaspoons of seafood stock. It wasn’t as flavorful as I wanted, but the consistency was perfect.

And because the rest of the meal was labor-intensive, I cut corners a bit on my sauce, using a jarred Alfredo – but doctoring it with more cheese, roasted garlic, sauteed shallots, chives, milk and a little dry Chardonnay. The end result was excellent, as was the final presentation of the dish. The lightly-sauced ravioli was finished with roasted cherry tomato halves, more fresh-grated pecorino, basil chiffonade and a slight drizzle of white truffle oil.

There is such satisfaction in creating something this delicious with your own two hands, despite the sheer amount of kitchen cleanup that awaits you later. Many thanks to my mom and dad, who will certainly be the beneficiaries of fresh pasta in the near future.