I got no skillz
I decided to try something different with food today: I tried to make pasta. I like making things from scratch, and I like pasta, so this seems like something that would ultimately go well. I don’t know the first thing about making pasta, though, so this attempt wasn’t everything I had ever hoped for.
In retrospect, I actually have a book about making pasta (thanks, mom), so I probably should have started there. Instead I just set out with an ingredient in mind, and the Internet suggested that I could put the basil I had into some fettucine noodles. I took a few photographs of the experience if you want to see my failure. My first problem was that the recipe I was using was completely useless. The dough was way too dry, so I ended up just adding another egg and some more flour and water until it seemed right. I don’t know what kind of consistency pasta dough is supposed to have, so I probably got it wrong. The dough I made was slightly damp and sticky and about right if I were making bread, but pasta dough probably ought to be a little drier. I’m not sure. The next mistake I made was making the noodles way too big. I think that the thickness problem could be partially solved by buying a rolling pin—I don’t have one so I just use an empty bottle, and that doesn’t have a lot of heft—but mostly I just need to be more patient. I ended up with some very large noodles that were impossible to cook.
Due to the aforementioned impatience, I also didn’t dry the noodles completely before cooking them. I gave them about an hour, so the noodles were still quite damp, and the end result was very doughy. I didn’t cook all of them, so I’m going to let the rest dry all the way and cook them later, but I suspect that thickness is my primary problem. The alfredo sauce, on the other hand, was delicious.
While I’m on the topic of food, I tried a new bread recipe this weekend. This one was recently published in the New York Times, and it’s unusual in that the dough requires no kneading. Instead, it’s allowed to rise slowly over the course of 18 hours or so. It came out ok, but I have a couple of complaints. The mistakes I made were using the wrong yeast (I didn’t have any instant yeast, but active dry seemed to work pretty well) and doing a bad job of baking the bread. The prescribed method is to use a heated, covered pot for about half an hour and then uncover it for the last stretch. The only thing I have of an appropriate size that can handle temperatures that high is my crock pot, and, either because it’s too wide or because I can’t cover it tightly, the crust ended up being a bit too hard. Other than that my only complaint is that the holes are a bit big, which is to be expected. I suspect this could be solved with a minute or two of kneading after the long rise.
I didn’t try to add any flavorings on my first try, so the result, though certainly ok, is pretty plain. As a bread I don’t find it very interesting, but as a technique I think it’s one worth remembering.