Pasta

For my first proper post, I'm going to combine a couple of recipes, the first to make your own pasta, and secondly to make a sauce to go with it. Puttanesca is an intense, tangy, tomato-based sauce, traditionally combining olives, capers and garlic. Over the years this has evolved a little in my house, with the addition of anchovy, chilli, pancetta and a splash of balsamic vinegar, to create a luscious, dark sauce. Sweet, salty, rich and with a little bite from the chilli, it is perfect for the dark winter nights.

Firstly though, the pasta. Making spaghetti, linguine or any of the long pasta varieties, is best done using a pasta machine. And by best done, I really mean it is very difficult to do without. The pasta dough has to be rolled so thin that to do it by hand would be almost impossible (although I imagine there's an Italian nonna or two who would disagree). It certainly makes it much more achievable in the home kitchen, and if you think you'd enjoy making your own pasta, they are certainly a good buy (you can pick them up for around £20-40 online).

Pasta dough is best made using '00' flour, which can be bought in any larger supermarket, or at specialist food delis, if you're lucky enough to have one close by. It differs from normal flour by being incredibly finely ground, allowing you to make very smooth dough, perfect for pasta (as well as pizza, which I'll definitely cover another time).

As a guide, for every 100g of '00' flour, you want to use half the weight of egg, so 50g. I know eggs don't come in weights, but it really is the best way for me to tell you. I could tell you one egg, but eggs can vary so much in size. However, if you weigh a single egg for example, and you find it weighs say 40g, and you don't want to waste another, then you can top it up to 50g with water. The only other ingredient is salt. I've seen recipes that add olive oil, but I've always found it can make the dough tight and unworkable.

Of course, not everyone has, or wants, a pasta maker, and so if you don't, obviously just cook up some pasta to go with the sauce! I find long pasta works best with this sauce (my personal favourite is linguine), but whatever you have in the cupboard will go just fine.

Pasta Dough - Serves 2

100g '00' pasta flour

50g eggs

Pinch salt

If you're making the pasta by hand, then weigh out the flour into a large bowl, add a pinch of salt and then add the egg, slowly bringing the mixture together with your fingers until it forms a dough. Empty it out onto a floured surface and then knead it for 5-10mins until it is soft and springy to touch (it's important not to skip the kneading! It develops the gluten in the flour and basically means the pasta will be edible once it's cooked).

Once kneaded, form into a ball and then wrap tightly in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge. Ideally leave it for 30mins to an hour.

While it is resting, set up your pasta machine. It will need to be clamped to the work surface (follow the instructions you get with it, but this will stop it moving while you are rolling). Dust the area around the machine with flour as well, to stop the pasta sticking as you roll it. The machine should be set at its widest setting (again, follow your instructions).

Once the pasta is rested, unwrap it and place onto the floured surface. You'll need to roll it out manually into a roughly rectangle shape in order to begin to feed it into the machine. Once this is done, carefully place one end into the pasta machine and begin to roll it through. I roll my dough twice through each thickness setting, getting down to a very thin sheet, before folding in half again and again to get back to a small rectangle of dough, turning it 90 degrees and feeding it back through the machine on each setting once more. This reduces your waste, as when your first roll, you'll get slightly raggedy edges, which you won’t want to use if you're trying to impress someone.

Doing it this way might seem long, but actually it doesn't take any longer than maybe 10 minutes in total to roll it, you get great pasta, and it can be quite therapeutic, just take your time and make sure it turns out well. It may take a few attempts before you get it just right, but people are really impressed by homemade pasta, and once you've mastered this you'll also be able to use the same basic technique to make ravioli and tortellini.

Once you have a long sheet, attach whichever cutter you want onto the pasta maker (most come with spaghetti and tagliatelle cutters as a minimum) and then run the pasta through the cutter in the same way to create your shards of gold. You should cut your pasta as soon as it is rolled, as it dries very quickly. If you need to wait any length of time, either try not to roll it out, or cover it with a damp cloth. Once cut, it can be hung over a wooden spoon handle or whatever you have available and allowed to dry for a few minutes before cooking. Fresh pasta cooks in a matter of minutes. A large pot of boiling water, with a good pinch of salt (my Italian food bible, The Silver Spoon, recommends 10g of salt per litre of water) and the pasta will cook in around 2-3 minutes. Always be sure to taste it, pinch a little off with your hand - it should be cooked through but still have a firmness to it ('al dente').

Puttanesca Sauce

100g pancetta (or 1 box of cubetti de pancetta, which most supermarkets stock and is what I use)

2 cloves garlic

1 red chilli

4 anchovies

400g tin of chopped tomatoes

15-20 pitted olives (black or kalamata work best)

2-3 tbsp capers

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Bunch of flat leaf parsley

Salt and pepper (to taste)

Place a large frying pan onto a medium heat. Once up to temperature, add the pancetta to the pan and fry for 4-5 minutes until golden. The pancetta will give up some of its delicious fat (don't throw this away!). Using a slotted spoon, remove the pancetta and place in a bowl.

Finely slice the anchovies and chilli, then place into the pan and allow to cook for a few minutes in the pancetta oil. If you have anchovies stored in oil, then add a little of the anchovy oil into the pan first as well, for an extra punch of flavour. The anchovies should begin to almost melt in the oil - if they look like they are starting to brown, lower the heat.

Finely slice (or grate on a microplane grater if you have one) the garlic and add to the pan for just a minute or two - don't allow to brown otherwise the garlic will taste bitter.

Tip in the chopped tomatoes, olives, capers and a splash of balsamic vinegar, then turn the heat down and allow the sauce to simmer gently for 10-15 minutes, to allow the flavours to come together. (If you have a stick blender, sometimes it can be a good idea to blitz the tomatoes for a few seconds before adding. If you're using the supermarket own brand or value brand tomatoes, they can have quite chunky pieces of tomato in, and it works better if they are blended down. My stick blender fits straight into a standard size tin, so I don't have to wash another bowl!)

The sauce is ready when it has thickened ever so slightly, at which point you can add the pancetta back in, add the finely chopped parsley, check and adjust the seasoning, and then serve with the pasta.

Serve your pasta however you want obviously, but traditionally, the pasta is always mixed with the sauce before being served, rather than having the sauce on top of the pasta. It’s how I like to do it and it means the pasta gets beautifully coated with all of the sauce before serving.

Once your sauce is ready you can cook the pasta, that's how little time the pasta takes. Drain the pasta (but first reserve a little of the pasta water) and add into the pan of sauce. Mix or toss around in the pan, and if the mixture looks a little dry for any reason, add a little of the pasta water to loosen.

I'm pretty confident you'll love this sauce, but play around with it. Add in some other ingredients that take your fancy or take out anything you don't like. That’s how I cook.

 

Happy cooking.