Friday, August 22, 2008

Pasta: Trial 1

To be fair, I have to admit that I've made pasta several times in the past; however, I have never felt completely prepared and all previous attempts have been artful rather than scientific. So, in an attempt to discover the best homemade pasta, I began Trial 1 of my pasta tests. The key will be care with ingredients, monitoring of recipe differences, and many, many taste tests.

I've decided to do at least 2 and possible 3 trials depending on the quality of recipes I can find. This first test is between two reasonable pasta recipes from two cookbooks - the Italian classic Silver Spoon (get it) and a book given to me at Christmas one year.

At this point, semolina flour is easily sourced from nearly any grocery store. Unfortunately, the preferred grind of white flour used in some recipes (such as Silver Spoon) is Italian 00 or doppio zero flour. For this, my brother brought me a few pounds from NYC. I prefer to source closer to home, and especially not from NYC, due to a desire to find local foods and also a desire not to ever admit that NYC is, in any way, culturally or culinarily superior to the Midwest.

Recipe 1, Silver Spoon:
1 and 3/4 cups doppio zero flour
2 eggs, lighly beaten
pinch salt

Recipe 2, :
2 3/4 cups doppio zero flour
1 1/4 cups semolina flour
10 egg yolks, 3 whole eggs

Results: Both versions proved perfectly good, but there were differences. The Silver Spoon's version proved much smoother, but with a little less flavor. The second version had a lot more texture and flavor and made a much more durable dried noodle, but was not quite on par. Between the two, I think I preferred the Silver Spoon version, but for the sake of added texture and durability, I think adding some semolina is a good idea. Also, I think that the Silver Spoon version might make a better thin noodle.

So, for next time: Silver Spoon recipe with a cup of semolina added. But what about the eggs??

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Canning

Frustrated by the enormous but necessary price fluctuations of summer berries, particularly blueberries, I started thinking about the possibilities for preserving summer fruits for the winter. The most obvious solution to this problem is freezing the berries. Well, living in an apartment and interested in solving problems in not quite the most obvious way, canning became of particular interest. After a lot of research and discussion with ... mostly old people, I got a bit nervous. Word from ... these old people was that canning was hard, despite the seeming simplicity. My own grandmother told me that canning berries was impossible. Well, I bought jars and decided to use one of my afternoons off to make two preliminary pints of canned blueberries.

I used a large sauce pot rather than a canner based on price and the fact that I already had a large sauce pot. I was worried about the height of the pot, but it proved to be just enough. I cleaned and boiled the jars, filled them with blueberries and hot apple juice (I opted out of syrup for the sake of health) and reboiled them. That's as simple as it was to produce. While I have not tried them yet since I am waiting until fall, only a small amount of discoloration that was to be expected, they seem ready to go.

One mystery: In theory, the filled and sealed mason jars come out of the boiling water sealed but not vacuumed. As the air inside the jar cools and condenses, it pulls in the safety popper thing that denotes a properly sealed jar. Strangely, the jars came out already sealed and vacuumed. I have yet to figure out the physics of how the contents of the jar could have reduced in volume enough to vacuum seal the jar while boiling. Frankly, it's driving me a bit nuts.

Next project: canning bolognese sauce. This follow-up will make meals during school and work much easier, and the acidity of the tomatoes should make canning easy.

By the way, my kitchen storage is now filled with canned blueberries, and it looks pretty cool.

Welcome

Four months ago, I wrote a to-do list of goals for the last free summer of my life. I have yet to finish the list. In fact, based on what became the frequency of how often I added new goals, I have achieved very few. This blog will document my attempts at crossing each goal off the list as well as creating new goals. Hopefully, graduate school will not impede my attempts to keep trying.