Keeping home-made pasta fresh...

[kretch]

Hi, I am hosting a dinner party this coming Saturday. One of the dishes planned includes home-made bowtie pasta. The dough is just all purpose flour and eggs.

I did a test run last week and the bowties turned out great. I made them at night and left them out, under a tent of plastic wrap, for about 18 hours, before they went into the boiling water.

But here's what I'm worried about: for the actual dinner, I'm probably going to need to make a couple hundred or more bowties. It's a fairly time-intensive process (hand shaping each one) so I'd rather do a third Wednesday, a third Thursday, and a third Friday, or something along those lines. I have no idea, however, how the already shaped bowties will hold up if I make them as early as Wednesday, and don't drop them in water until Saturday afternoon.

Thoughts? Can I just refrigerate in covered container for 3+ days? Will the shape hold? Is there anything I should do to prevent it from drying out, or turning to slime?

I don't have much experience refrigerating pasta dough; every other time I've used my pasta machine I've cooked the pasta within a day and a half of making it.

Also, alternatively, would it make sense to cook it before Saturday, and just refrigerate the cooked-product? Par-cooked, maybe?

Sorry if this is a simple question, over-complicated. I just don't want to find out on Saturday that Wednesday's bowties have turned to brittle, or to slime.

[slkinsey]

Freeze them on a cookie sheet. Once they're frozen, transfer them to a plastic ziplock bag. Cook from frozen.

[emsny]

I agree about freezing, but, should freezer space be an issue, another possibility could be to let them dry, then put into a container and refrigerate.

[kretch]

I agree about freezing, but, should freezer space be an issue, another possibility could be to let them dry, then put into a container and refrigerate.

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I should have the space. Thanks to both of you for the quick response!

[Chris Amirault]

Freeze them on a cookie sheet.  Once they're frozen, transfer them to a plastic ziplock bag.  Cook from frozen.

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What he says. Don't par-cook them; the texture goes to hell.

I'd also suggest a less time-intensive pasta shape, while I'm at it.

[ghostrider]

At the Italian deli where I work, the owners (born in Bari, for whatever that's worth) make & sell fresh pasta 4 days a week. They routinely advise their customers that it will keep refrigerated for 2 days; if it needs to be kept any longer than that, it should be frozen after purchase.

They've been in business for 25 years & have never had a complaint about this advice as far as I know.

Storage: they sell the ravioli in covered cardboard boxes, cornmeal sprinkled on the bottom; other pastas are sold in plastic bags sealed with a twist-tie.

In my experience the pasta is at its best the day of purchase; it's still good the next day but it seems to lose a bit of flavor & texture.

So in your situation, I'd go with the "freeze it" bandwagon.

[slkinsey]

I'd also suggest a less time-intensive pasta shape, while I'm at it.

What's so time-intensive about farfalle? You just cut the pasta into rectangles and pinch it together in the center.

[StevenC]

I find that freezing fresh egg pasta gives it a gummy texture. If you refrigerate it, the dough becomes soggy and the shapes stick to one another and to whatever surface they're resting on. You can try dusting them with cornmeal, but (a) it doesn't always work and (b) the cornmeal adds an unpleasant film of starch to the cooked pasta.

If you really want to make your own egg pasta and you absolutely need to make it ahead of time, choose a less complicated flat shape and let the pasta sit out in a single layer on a floured tablecloth. (Be care not to stack the shapes.) In a couple of hours they will be completely dry, and you can store them in a paper bag. The texture will not be the same as when you boil fresh pasta, and if your kitchen is too humid and hot the pasta might develop off flavors as it dries. Usually, drying works fine for simple tagliatelle, pappardelle and the like, although special shapes can sometimes crack as they dry.

There's another reason why I wouldn't recommend making bow ties/farfalle ahead of time. If you freeze or dry them, the pinched middle is going to take longer to cook than the flat edges. When the pasta is fresh, I find this doesn't present too much of a problem, but if you freeze or dry them, you're going to end up either with a hard knot at the center, or overcooked edges. Just talking from experience here.

Edited September 17, 2007 by StevenC (log)

[kretch]

I'd also suggest a less time-intensive pasta shape, while I'm at it.

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Thanks, but this is for kasha varnishkes, for a Yom Kippur break-fast, and doing it with anything other than bowties would be... remember in Goodfellas, when Ray Liota's character goes into witness protection, orders spaghetti with marinara, and gets egg noodles with ketchup? Yeah, that.

(Of course, I could, like a sane person, just use store-bought bowties, but that's another matter altogether.)

(Interestingly, for what it's worth, the orignal, Eastern European version of the dish apparently used flat egg noodles, but since the 1920's the American Jewish version has universally called for bowties, as far as I can tell.)

Tom

[Chris Amirault]

Sam, my suggestion was grounded in the OP's comment about it being time-intensive -- and noodles that don't require a pinch take less time than those that do. Having said that, far be it for this goyim to suggest a different shape for kasha varnishkes!

[kretch]

There's another reason why I wouldn't recommend making bow ties/farfalle ahead of time.  If you freeze or dry them, the pinched middle is going to take longer to cook than the flat edges.  When the pasta is fresh, I find this doesn't present too much of a problem, but if you freeze or dry them, you're going to end up either with a hard knot at the center, or overcooked edges.  Just talking from experience here.

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Interesting, thanks. If - as above - I'm set on bowties, what would your recommendation be, to make it all work? Am I stuck just making all of them the night before? How would you go about it?

Thanks, everyone, for the comments above.

[StevenC]

Interesting, thanks. If - as above - I'm set on bowties, what would your recommendation be, to make it all work? Am I stuck just making all of them the night before? How would you go about it?

Thanks, everyone, for the comments above.

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I did some checking, and you're totally right that the original Eastern European version didn't use bowties. Joan Nathan, in her book Jewish Cooking in America, talks about how the original recipe for kasha varnishkes involved "a kreplach-type noodle stuffed with kasha, buckwheat groats, and gribenes"--the packaged bow-tie noodles were an American adaptation. Also, Robert Sternberg's recipe for kasha varnishkes in Yiddish Cuisine calls for medium or wide egg noodles...

Accordingly, if I may be so bold, you might consider something other than the usual bow-tie. You're apparently looking to do a higher-quality, surprising spin on a traditional recipe. If you need to sacrifice the freshness of the noodles by making them ahead of time, though, look for another way to introduce quality back into the equation. For example, try making flat noodles, but use all yolks, or use duck eggs or goose eggs if you can find them. The flat noodles will suffer less from storage, and both the taste and color will be a nice improvement.

Edited September 18, 2007 by StevenC (log)