When I am not with my parents or the Tall Short Person, I rarely eat the traditional meals for any holiday. Usually, I am only cooking for two. And as much as I like the flavours, there are traditional foods that aggravate my arthritis a lot. It is not worth the increased pain for a few bites of food.
It is similar to why I have to buy a pair of walking shoes every three months. It is how fast I go through them and how sensitive my joints are. I need a walking shoe fairy. Sigh. Life with arthritis.
For Christmas day, I decided to make a pasta dish that I had seen in the cookbook Flour + Water. I would have to say that this cookbookd did not inspire me to make all the recipes. It did make me want to buy all the tools that were talked about to make pasta. All the old hand tools. Like the corzetti of this recipe, there is a stamp that can be purchased to make these in a traditional pattern. If you do not have it, circles.
I did get a new pasta rolling pin though for Christmas. Tool geek here. I currently have six rolling pins in the house. I use three of those most every week if not multiple times a week. But then I make dough. Talk to Koda Bear about that one!
The dough for the corzetti uses white wine. It has a much softer consitency then I expected but then it rolled out much eaiser then I expected as well. I am not sure I tasted the wine in the dough much but I liked what the wine did to the wine. I always have to ask for recommendations for wine purchases. There are so few i like.
corzetti pasta
360 grams flour (00 if you have it, I used a whole wheat pastry flour)
1 large egg
1/2 cup or 118 ml white wine
I make my life simpler and use a bowl to start my pasta in instead of straight on the counter.
Put the flour into a bowl. Make a well. Add the egg. Start mixing the egg and flour together from the center. When most of the egg is incorporated, mix in the wine.
Turn the shaggy mess from the bowl out onto a clean surface.
Knead until smooth. I did not need a lot of extra flour for kneading.
I put the dough in a ziploc now and let it sit for 24 hours. It just lets everything meld better and makes the dough easier to roll. The recipe I followed did not do that so I do not know what changes it would make.
When you are ready to roll out the pasta, flour a clean surface. Roll the dough very thin. I found it was very elastic and did not need much flour. Cut the pasta in two inch circles. I do not have the authentic corzetti stamp but circles work if you do not have.
I sprinkled a baking sheet with pasta and laid the pasta on top of it while I cut and made the sauce I used. I dusted pasta between layers.
It was good and tasty and everyone seemed to like it. I served it with mussels and sausage in a sauce. I will write more about that tomorrow since I am out of words!