Mussels and sausage with the corzetti pasta

Yesterday.  Yesterday was a totally odd day.  Today I am grateful that I get a chance to bake some bread, that I am moving, and I have water.  It got the coldest it has gotten in years here.  Not here but up north, I have had broken pipes before.  Not something that I wish to experience ever again but I am also aware that is sometimes the curve life throws at you.  Just like taking it slowly when you do not wish to.  Oh well.  That is life.

This is the rest of the Christmas Eve dinner.  Mussels and sausage which was served with the corzetti pasta.  I got the idea from the Flour + Water cookbook.  Like I said yesterday, I liked the cookbook because of the cool tools.  The recipes not so much.  But one did inspire this combination.

I had some lovely sausage from Holy City Hogs in the freezer.  I had been gifted with this sausage at the boucherie.  So good!  Not a bad trade for four loaves of bread.  I knew there was some type of shellfish at the market but I took the easy way out and used some frozen mussels.  This turned out so good.  Koda Bear liked the pasta and sausage.  Oh well.

mussels and sausage for pasta

1 pound cleaned and shelled mussels

8 ounces very nice sausage

1/2 onion, skinned and chopped

2 cloves garlic minced

1 tablespoon dried basil

1 cup white wine

olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

cooked pasta, I used the corzetti I made

In a large pan, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil.  Add the onions and sauté until translucent and starting to colour.

Add the sausage.  Brown it with the onions.  Add the mussels, basil, and white wine.  Heat the mussels through.  Taste and adjust salt and pepper.

A lot of the wine will probably cook off as the mussels heat.  There will not be a lot of liquid sauce but there will be a lot of flavour.

Serve over cooked pasta.  

So good.

corzetti pasta

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!

chipolte honey mustard dressing

This.  This is where my life is.  I need to make for the refrigerator:

1) chocolate syrup

2) orange syrup

3) ginger syrup

4) caesar dressing

5) ketchup

6) chipolte honey mustard dressing

If I have not made it, one of the boyos is at least willing to try.  If there are directions.  Last week I got asked to send the link.  

The only recipe of the above I have not written down is the chipolte honey mustard dressing.  That is because I just came up with it.  I usually want a chipolte aioli with my tacos.  The boyos have a tendency not to like it very well.  I like more chipolte then they do.

There has been talk of a honey mustard dressing being added to my repertoire.  That is how I came up with the idea.  But maybe I should not have.  Because most of the time I do not have enough chipolte aioli in this form for my tacos.  I have to share.  

By the way, the caesar gets put on tacos too.  At least two, if not three, of the list will be made for dinner tonight.  It will depend on if Koda Bear wants chocolate milk or not to drink with his dinner

chipolte honey mustard dressing

pinch of salt

pinch of pepper

1 crushed and peeled garlic clove

3 tablespoons mustard (I use my fermented mustard)

3 tablespoons honey or agave

1 teaspoon chipolte

1 egg yolk

1 cup olive oil

I have a container I can use with my immersion blender and that is what I use for this dressing.

In the container, put in the salt, pepper, garlic, mustard, honey, chipolte, and egg yolk.  Blend.

Slowly start adding in the olive oil, blending very well after each addition.  Keep adding until the dressing is the consistency you wish or all the oil is gone.

Serve on tacos or fish or french fries or salads.  Yes.  Really.

sweet bread dough

I hope every one had a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Quiet was happened for me which I have to admit is my favourite.  New Year's Eve was movies and tea.  There was a bit of sparkling wine with a nice steak and salad.  To me, it was about perfect.

There were a lot of experiments last week and over the weekend.  Which I will get to.  But the one thing I discovered when I made the St Lucy's buns that I am still itching from, is a lovely sweet bread dough.  It is nice to have a go to sweet bread dough.  Again, from the tome.  This dough works really well with sourdough.  Since I only do sourdough, pretty huge.  

I made it into cinnamon rolls and punky monkey bread.  The monkey bread started to be called funky punky monkey bread.  And then it started to get called zombie bread because of the reactions it was getting.  It was like zombies going after brains.

I am getting ready to try panettone next.  I am making the candied citrus peel for that.  It would help if it did not get thrown out.  I have helping hands.  Which is a good reason to have a sweet bread dough that I can use as a guideline.

sweet bread dough

Note:  Modified from The Nordic Cook Book to use sourdough and a bit of whole wheat flour.

sourdough starter

100 grams water

100 grams flour

320 ml / 1 cup 5 tablespoons milk

150 grams butter

1 tablespoon cardamom

1 egg

125 grams sugar

1 teaspoon salt

250 grams whole wheat pastry flour

500 grams all purpose flour

Eight hours or the night before, mix the starter, 100 grams flour, and 100 grams water in a large bowl.  Cover.  When it is bubbling, take out a portion for next time.

To the starter, add the milk, butter, cardamom, egg, and sugar.  Mix well.  Mix in half the flour.  Cover and let rest for about an hour or an hour and a half.  It should be bubbling and the consistency of pancake batter.

Mix in the salt.  Mix in about half of the last of the flour to make a soft dough.  It may be very soft.  Turn out on a clean surface and use the last of the flour to knead until smooth.  You might need a bit more. 

Put into a clean bowl and let rise for one hour.  Take it out.  Flatten into a rectangle.  Fold the long side of the dough into the middle, and repeat with the opposite side.  Fold the ends toward the center.  Gather it up into a cubish round and put back into a bowl.  Cover.  Repeat this process three times.

At this point, I sometimes need to put the dough into a ziploc and put it into the refrigerator until the next day.  It works well.

If you refrigerate it, the next day let the dough come to room temperature.

Shape and fill the bread anyway you please.  The middle picture is the zombie bread.  Above is cinnamon rolls.  Put the shaped dough in the correct pan for shape with the pan buttered and lined with parchment paper.

Let rise until puffy.

The oven temperature will depend on shape.  Higher for smaller and a shorter bake time.  Longer bake and lower temperature for larger loaf.  Most loafs I bake at 350 degrees Farhenheit for an hour.

Whatever you make of it, this is a good sweet bread.  Have fun!

chocolate pasta

My life has been wild trying to get ready for Christmas.  This not unusual for me but when my instigating friend sends me pictures of chocolate pasta, life gets even more crazy.  It is not like I am reading pasta cookbooks anyhow.  Getting a few ideas but mostly looking up "new" cool tools.  Okay, so I like the hand tools best.  Call me crazy.  I have a list!

I found a recipe for chocolate pasta on line.  Basically, it was switch out some of the flour for a good unsweetened cocoa.  Not rocket science.  Or rock science either for that matter.

It was not bad.  There is no sweetness to the pasta.  There is a bit more depth and a bit of a bitter bite so you have to chose the sauce wisely.  I made a gorgonzola cream sauce garnished with toasted walnuts.  The strong flavours worked.  

Would I make the pasta again?  Maybe.  It was not that much better then my other handmade pasta.  I may need to find a better sauce.  But I am writing down what I did for next time.

chocolate pasta

2 1/4 cups flour

3/4 cup flour

3 eggs

water

I am lazy and do not wish to clean up too hard, so I do pasta dough in a bowl to start.  

Put the flour and cocoa in a bowl.  Mix together and make a well.  Crack in three eggs to the well.  Start beating them in from the center and start incorporating the flour mixture until you can stir in as much as you can.  It will probably be crumbly.

Turn out a clean surface and start kneading.  I needed to add a few tablespoons of water to make a stiff dough.  I need it until it is silky with as little added water as possible.  Wrap it and place it in the refrigerator over night.

Before dinner, take the dough out of the refrigerator.  On a clean surface that has a light coating of flour, start rolling it out.  Roll the dough out as thin as you can.  It is work.

Once the dough has been rolled out, roll it up so it can be sliced into noodles.  

As the noodles are cut, put on a baking sheet with flour.  Dust them well so they do not stick to each other.  Let them dry while you continue cutting and make your sauce.

When ready cook, bring a large pot of salted water to boil.  Add the pasta.  Bring back to a boil and boil for a few minutes.

Drain and serve with the sauce of your choice.

I like making pasta so this was fun.  I have a few more pasta doughs I wish to try.  I should not be allowed to shop for new and interesting ingredients alone.  Too much temptation!