Fun with pasta

[helenas]

Remember we had a thread on pasta risotto by Ducasse? There i mentioned that Patricia Wells had a similar recipe in her provence book (great minds think alike...). When i finally checked the book, actually it's the same recipe, where she mentioned her visit to Ducasse restaurant and how she was watching the chef in the kitchen (i think it was not Ducasse) preparing pasta using risotto technique.

What's more interesting, in the same book she has a recipe for fried noodles (spanish?), where you just toast fideo-like pasta coated in olive oil in the oven, and then boil it in chicken stock. So i tried it yesterday and it came very tasty.

So what other interesting techniques can be applied to pasta beyond usual boiling?

[Ron Johnson]

Helena, have you tried the pasta risotto method, and if so, how did it turn out in your opinion?

[helenas]

Ron,

i did try the pasta risotto, and it was good. The only problem was that i used a canned stock (College Inn?), and it somehow overwhelmed pasta. The texture was great though, and i plan to experiment with more risotto recipes, using different pasta shapes.

[Jim Dixon]

I've made fideos-style dishes with a number of things. the basic technique is to saute the pasta in olive oil (long, thin pasta, either vermicelli or cappelini, and break it up into short pieces first) until it's well-browned, then add   any other ingredients (things like onion, garlic, etc) and liquid.

I use the same method with smaller shapes, like the melon-seed pasta (slightly bigger than orzo, which also works well).

Of course, this is exactly how you make Rice-A-Roni.

The Ducasse article was just run in our local paper today. It's interesting that he specifies the old-style (now artisanal) pastas made with brass dies and air-dried. They do taste a lot better than the industrial stuff (extruded through teflon dies at high speeds and flash-dried at high temps), but cost about 5 times as much.

A variation on this approach is draining the pasta while it's still undercooked, then continuing the process in the sauce.

[helenas]

A variation on this approach is draining the pasta while it's still undercooked, then continuing the process in the sauce.

This reminds me that somewhere i've read about cooking pasta in water and when it's half-done you finish it in red wine. Was it Bittman? Anybody tried this?

[Rail Paul]

I liked the original thread on Ducasse's Olive Mill Pasta, and have experimented on four tries.

Added strips of cooked duck leg meat as the exact recipe was finishing, that worked well.

Used home made chicken stock and very little tomato, that worked very well. Used a lot of garlic in that version.

Used red wine in place of half the stock, I liked it, Dee didn't. Substituted half carrots for half the potatoes.

Less successful was a garlic and chicken version. I over cooked the chicken legs (browned them first) when I let them finish in the sauce with the pasta. I think I'd take the meat off the legs before browning them next time and add them like the duck, at the last moment.

[helenas]

Another recently discovered idea: lasagna rolls, or nidimi (as per Jody Adams' recipe in her book)

Take the curly lasagna cut ( i used Ronzoni, which was a bit too wide), boil the pasta al dente, drain and dry in towels, spread some filling (as for cannelloni) over each strip, roll it tightly, stand upright in a shallow baking dish, pour some bechamel-like sauce on top, sprinkle with some cheese and put the dish under the broiler until brown.

[Jinmyo]

Helena, that's great. It makes stuffed pasta much easier.

Though the width which thus becomes the height of the pasta could be a problem, as you mentioned, just using packaged lasangna noodles and cutting them to the right size after cooking them should do.