Ultimate Cook Book_ 900 New Recipes, Thousands of Ideas - Bruce Weinstein [110]
Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. For best results, use about 6 quarts of water in an 8-quart stockpot.
Meanwhile, pull off a section of dough about the size of a lemon. Dust your hands and the work surface lightly with flour, then roll the piece of dough between your palms to form a cylinder about 1 inch thick and 10 inches long.
Slice the cylinder into 1-inch segments. Place the tines of a clean fork against the work surface, back side up. Gently roll the dough pieces up the fork, barely pressing down, to give them an indented pattern that will hold the sauce; they will be slightly squished. Place the finished gnocchi on the prepared baking sheet and continue with the remaining dough. Cover these pieces on your work surface with a clean kitchen towel, then repeat steps 6 and 7 with the remaining dough.
Gather the gnocchi loosely in your hands and drop them into the boiling water. Stir well, then cook undisturbed until they float to the surface, about 2 minutes. Drain but do not rinse. Toss with a sauce while they’re still warm.
Note: Gnocchi must only be made with Russet potatoes because of their unique starch/moisture balance.
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The History of Durum Wheat—or Why We Make Pasta with Eggs
Italian pasta was once made solely from water and durum, a wheat with amazingly strong proteins and glutens (thus, known as a “hard” wheat). Back then, Italy was the global producer.
When pasta’s popularity flashed across Europe in the late 1800s, wheat farmers came into boom times—so much so that other nations got in on the act. Italian farmers soon lost out to those on the more fertile Ukrainian steppes. Unfortunately, the Russian Revolution followed by two world wars brought about the near collapse of the Russian wheat industry. American entrepreneurs jumped into the gap. Today, most of the world’s durum comes from North Dakota.
And almost all of it goes into commercial production. Milled durum (aka “semolina flour”) occasionally shows up as “pasta flour” in high-end supermarkets, but even there it’s hard to find. To complicate matters, what’s marketed as semolina is sometimes not durum at all; any finely ground flour can be semolina, even rice flour.
For convenience’ sake, we make pasta with all-purpose flour, the baking standard. Because it’s a softer flour, it won’t make a dough with water. Remember kindergarten? All-purpose flour and water make paste. So protein-rich eggs are added to make up for all-purpose flour’s slacker structure.
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Pasta Sauces
Although this may appear at first blush to be just a list of pasta sauces, it’s actually a section of sauced dishes: each sauce is offered as a complete pasta dish, noodles and all. You can, of course, pick and choose with wide latitude, although we’ve given our preference for the type of noodles with each sauce. We’ve divided the section into three parts: sauces that need minimal preparation, ones that require a little more, and ragùs, long simmered but worth the effort.
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Sauced Pasta Dishes with
Little Preparation
Pasta con Salsa Cruda (Pasta with
a No-Cook Tomato Sauce)
This no-cook sauce is best when tomatoes are at their ripest. Prepare the sauce first so it can be tossed with the still-warm pasta. Makes enough sauce for 1 pound fresh or 12 ounces dried pasta
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon white wine vinegar
½ teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds ripe Italian plum tomatoes (about 8 tomatoes)
¼ cup chopped basil leaves
1 pound fresh or 12 ounces dried pasta, cooked and drained
Whisk the olive oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper in a large bowl.
Cut the tomatoes into several sections, then hold these over the sink or a trash can and scoop out the seeds and their membranes with a small