Tag: Noodle

The 5 secrets for the perfect noodle – Italian Cuisine

Pasta measurements, pastry board, egg-flour proportions, drafts: here's how to make noodles at home without making a mistake

Put the hands in dough dispels the mood and brings back the calm. An excellent excuse to try your hand at the homemade preparation of one of the most famous Italian pastas in the world, typical of Bologna: his majesty, the noodle.

I'm not just a fresh pasta shape: the tagliatella is a real institution, so much so that the Confraternity of Tortellino, together with the Italian Academy of Cuisine, in 1972 deposited the original recipe of the "Bologna Tagliatella", which must be served strictly with the Bolognese sauce.

Curious to know what i am secrets for the perfect noodle? We will reveal them below, together with the recipe authentic. In the gallery, however, we give you some tips for the condiments and not only.

1. Attention to the measures!

The measurements of the perfect tagliatella are filed with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce and are: from raw it must correspond to approx 7 mm wide (i.e. equal to 12270th part of the Torre degli Asinelli), while after cooking, a 8 mm. As for the thickness, it has not been specified, but experts in the sector argue that it should be among the 6 and 8 tenths of a millimeter.

2. Get the wooden pastry board

To work the dough, just any shelf is not enough: to make it perfectly homogeneous and smooth, you need a wooden pastry board with a rough surface, more suitable for pulling the dough than on a smooth surface.

3. Beware of eggs

The proportions of the ingredients are important: you just need to an egg – the eggs must be fresh and at room temperature – every 100 grams of flour.

4. Beware of flour

In the choice of flour you can have a say: you can opt for 100% white, if you want a fine consistency or with a presence of semolina flour, if you want a coarser consistency.

5. No to drafts

Pay attention to where you start to work the dough: air currents that can dry the dough should be avoided.

How to make egg noodles

Ingredients

To make the tagliatell, you need to get: 300 g of 00 flour, 3 fresh eggs at room temperature, semolina to taste, salt to taste.

Method

On the wooden pastry board, create a fountain with flour and in the center, open the eggs, adding a pinch of salt. Begin beating the eggs with a fork, mixing them with the flour and bringing it from the edges of the fountain to the center. As soon as the eggs have absorbed a little flour, continue kneading by hand for at least 10 minutes, pulling the dough in every direction and making it elastic.

Once the dough is homogeneous, create a ball and put it to rest, at room temperature, by wrapping it in plastic wrap for half an hour. Now, roll out the dough on a pastry board with the help of a rolling pin, until you get a thickness of about 5 mm. If you don't have a rolling pin, you can also use a pasta machine.

Once you have obtained the dough, divide it into many regular rectangles, to be folded into three parts, sprinkling them with semolina, to prevent them from sticking on themselves. Now you can cut the roll of puff pastry at regular intervals of 7 mm. Once the pasta has been cut, remove the noodles obtained by separating them. Here they are, ready to cook and then season with Bolognese sauce.

The noodle counter (as a chef) – Italian Cuisine

Greasy, overcooked, slippery. Spaghettini, cappellini and small formats are back in fashion.

Spaghettini and capellini: in the menus of the great chefs the long pasta becomes narrow. They are not pet names, like when flans and baby carrots went out of fashion, but they were pasta shapes that had gone missing.
From the classic noodles we passed to years of domination of the spaghetti, of the square spaghetti, of the insistent callousness, of the push chewing. And so after the Spaghettoni Benedetto Cavalieri, 16-17 minutes of cooking, now they like spaghettini or, better still, capellini: 3 minutes and drain.
As in a counter-reformation, everything is changed and we are dedicated to more slippery formats, where the combination with the dressing is played with the consistency: al dente, from the consistency Crisp, or well cooked, to eat with effect "backwash". The spaghettoni in the restaurant force endless waits and occupy the pasta cookers making the work of the brigades difficult. These thin strands of pasta, however, represent a real challenge in the kitchen: they are cooked in just a few minutes, but just as quickly they overcook.
The spaghettone is good, tenacious, but indomitable with a fork. He unrolls himself by treachery, staining his shirt, and imposing suction

From Romito to Camanini, small is beautiful

Niko Romito serves them ends. In his continuous search for the archetype of the perfect pasta dish, he chose this format. The Capellini with tomato sauce are white, the tomato is there but you cannot see, like oil, that there is not enough. Massimiliano Alajmo, 3 Michelin stars, he also tried different, cold, rock or shell sauce.
Riccardo Camanini, a Michelin star chef at the Lido 84 restaurant in Gardone Riviera, award-winning and in his golden age, he serves a Spaghettino anointed in red. Almost blasphemous, Riccardo Camanini evokes the memory of overcooked pasta eaten as a child, the one that left the dish greasy. And here is the tomato paste (but handcrafted, Sicilian), the sauté and some noodles. The Spaghettino anointed in red cancels the years of sauces to the five, six, nine tomatoes, those of fresh tomatoes and restricted sauces, to revive a memory – unpleasant – of millions of Italians. And from him this too becomes very good because obviously instead of mistakes and haste, there are hours of work (24) and slow cooking. Very technical. In the ever-changing menu, a gluten-free spaghetti with ancient wheat and gluten-free rice have also passed, served lukewarm, dusted with thin-fried fried crab seasoned with lime kefir, tomato paste and chilli pepper … Matteo Baronetto at the Del Cambio in Turin, he works on the memory of pasta eaten in the North: almost overcooked and always fine. And here he proposes them simply with butter and parmesan, or crunchy, sautéed … in memory of the pasta the day after. Pino Cuttaia transforms angel hair into kataifi paste and rolls eggplant for a crunchy parmigiana.

Northern pasta

Nordic format? We ask to Riccardo Felicetti, of the homonymous pasta factory in Trentino and for years engaged in a research work with chefs of the caliber of Carlo Cracco. "The" ONE "phenomenon is a trend that is coming out of kitchens and fine pastas are now increasingly used by chefs," he explains. «Bottura, just to give an example, has a great spaghetti on paper. But already Gualtiero Marchesi, for his cold spaghetti with caviar, used a 1.5 mm thick Teflon drawn spaghetti to prevent an excessive release of starch . Carlo Cracco had cooked them in a small bowl, as a reinterpretation of a classic Ischia: Spaghettini with provola, lemon and fried caper flowers. We know how much the chefs play in advance and also drive home consumption. In fact, he continues: «The most“ fine ”format of Monograno Felicetti is currently the spaghettino Il Cappelli, but we are working on two new formats under the millimeter of thickness.

In the beginning it was Marchesi

The spaghetti salad with caviar and chives by Gualtiero Marchesi is a dish that has existed since 1985 and was revolutionary for a number of aspects: it played with pasta salad, using a long format; he was inspired by cold ramen eaten in Japan and reported dried pasta on the tables, when it was literally banned by the chefs of the time. It was the Master's favorite dish: «Caviar spaghetti salad. Cold spaghetti, with the chives on top. You would eat it every day. "

The theorist Peppe Guida

Spaghettini theorist, the Michelin two-star chef, Peppe Guida, chef of Nonna Rosa in Vico Equense, pasta guru, with Pastificio dei Campi he cooked several versions, including those to go to the Seafront Pastabar in Naples. Even in the south, therefore, the spaghettino likes it. From the classic Spaghettino with tomato, to the version with lemon water, oil and provolone and to the autumnal Torba, a dish inspired by spaghetti with mushrooms, but where there are no mushrooms, it has become his signature dish: Spaghettini with water of lemon and provolone.

The formats and the right sauce

Spaghettini are a classic format from southern Italy, also called vermicellini or half vermicelli. The Pastificio dei Campi of Gragnano proposes its Spaghettini di Gragnano I.G.P. (cooking 6 minutes) of Gragnano, the Spaghetti del Pastificio Gentile of Gragnano, produced with 100% Campania wheat. The noodles of the supply chain of the Mancini pasta factory, of the Marche, have a diameter of 1.8mm and a length of 260mm and the cooking time is 7-9 minutes. There Barilla it has always proposed different formats. Bavettine (6 minutes of cooking), Spaghettini (5 minutes), Capellini (3 minutes). The advice is always the same to better appreciate them: light seasonings, which do not weigh them down, very simple and white sauces. And no fear of cooking them because their fragility is only apparent: they keep their structure intact even when in contact with the hottest broth, while in dry recipes they are best expressed by enhancing all the flavor of the ingredients.

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Cao lầu, Vietnamese noodle dish … well water and ash – Italian Cuisine

The cao lầu is a Vietnamese dish from the province of Quảng Nam based on rice noodles cooked in a special local lava water used for cooking which gives it a unique flavor and consistency.

In the world there are traditional local dishes and drinks which, due to the particular ingredients used, cannot be faithfully reproduced in other areas. For example, analogous to the purple tea of the Azores Islands whose taste and color are the result of the mineral water used coming from the thermal springs, in Vietnam there is a dish that owes its characteristic taste and texture to the local water used for cooking. Let's talk about the cao lầu, a delicious rice noodle dish served with meat, vegetables and broth, whose noodles are previously soaked in water from a well in the city of Hội An enriched with ash from wood from trees.

Recipe and original preparation of cao lầu

This very special dish comes from Hội An, Vietnamese city in the province of Quảng Nam, on the south coast of the country. His recipe includes culinary techniques typical of Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese cuisines and rather easy ingredients to find in other areas. The cao lầu is indeed a rice noodle dish rather thick, similar to Japanese soba, moistened with a small amount of broth and served with a garnish of pork, stewed or fried and chopped or sliced, leafy vegetables, blanched bean sprouts, various herbs and small rice croutons. Although the recipe may seem simple, it actually takes a long time to prepare. The true secret of cao lầu however, as we have seen, lies in the unique ingredients. The noodles are in fact mixed with thewater rich in alum from the ancient Bá Lễ well of Hội An enriched with ash obtained by burning wood from a tree that grows on the nearby Cham islands, about 20 kilometers from the coast. After the noodles are immersed in this prodigious water, which makes them gummy, elastic and yellowish, they are processed to a length of about 10 centimeters and a width of 0.5 millimeters, to be then washed, boiled and cooled under the banana leaves. With a part of their dough, little squares are made that are fried and used to complete the soup and to give it a little crunchiness.

The cao lầu of Hội An between past and present

In short, it is only in Hội An that it is possible to taste the traditional and authentic form of cao lầu. In this charming and ancient coastal city of about 150 thousand, perfectly preserved and whose historic district characterized by French colonial architecture, canals and wooden shops has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1999, a time like today the merit of the preparation of this dish goes to one family. For four generations these chefs have been perpetuating tradition with dedication, technical skills and with a process that is as faithful as possible to the original.. The family currently no longer draws from the ancient well,

but draws water from a new well built well that produces water with similar properties. Even the ash used no longer comes from wood from the Cham islands, but from very similar local trees.

Nowadays cao lầu remains the main specialty of Hội An, present in all restaurant menus, but it is not always easy to find the original version, especially in tourist restaurants along the coast. The best solution, which many Vietnamese use, is to buy it from the many street vendors, at the affordable price of less than $ 2.

Photo: Cau Lau Noodles Vietnam_Flickr_by ElCapitan.jpg
Photo: Cao_lầu noodle Vietnam_Wikipedia Commons_ansieee.jpg
Photo: Cao lầu_Flickr_Premshree Pillai.jpg