30-Minute Homemade Pasta & Tomato Sauce

I used to cook a lot of dried, store-bought pasta. Then I discovered that I could buy fresh pasta from such places as the fantastic Pasta & Co. here in Austin, staffed by wonderful, friendly people. And it wasn't much more expensive than dried! My life was changed.

My life changed again when I noticed that, gee, every time I make pasta, it doesn't really seem to take that long. In fact, now that I have my big butcher-block island to work on, it's really extremely quick. I decided to see just how quickly I could throw together a pasta dish from scratch, and the result? Thirty minutes.

This post is meant to be both informative and also offer an imperative: make your own pasta! It's really not that hard! I think a lot of people see pasta as some kind of atomic ingredient, and the phrase "making pasta by hand" sounds something like "making rice by hand." But it's not. Pasta is just a dough that you shape, like any other dough, and it doesn't need to do anything tricky like rise.

Without further ado, I present the thirty-minute home-made pasta & tomato sauce. I used a simple pasta dough of just flour and eggs, because I like eggs but also because they act as a binder and will make the dough elastic better than water would. Since I prefer my pasta without all-purpose flour, and opt usually for all-semolina or sometimes a blend with whole-wheat flour, that's relatively important, because semolina flour doesn't develop gluten when you knead it quite like all-purpose flour does, so you won't get anywhere near as much elasticity from the flour. When you're trying to make the pasta quickly, elasticity is a handy quality because it means you can roll it out quickly, without letting the dough rest first, and it won't break or crumble.

As for the sauce, it's kind of secondary to this post, but I offer it for the sake of completion. I used a can of diced tomatoes, garlic, some leftover asparagus, and then a bunch of vegetables and herbs I had in my CSA basket: lemon basil, bell peppers, and a few jalapeños. I threw in some chopped roast chicken when it was almost done, just to reheat the chicken for the dish.

The trick to making this whole dish, start to finish, in 30 minutes is multitasking. Start the sauce simmering first thing, and then start the pasta dough. About 10 minutes in, put the water on to boil. As you finish cutting the pasta, throw the chicken in the sauce. Everything just fits together like clockwork.

There's the sauce, simmering away. Since I was hurried I just threw the asparagus in at the beginning, which meant it was a bit yellowed by the end, instead of staying vibrant green. Still tasted good. If I were presenting this to friends, I would have kept it separate and blanched it ala Keller in a giant pot of very salty water right before plating. But that alone would have taken 30 minutes.

Minutes to this step: 2. Or however many it takes you to open a can of tomatoes, cut up a few veggies, press a few cloves of garlic through a garlic press, and put it all in a pot over low heat.

As the sauce simmered, I mounded the flour on my countertop, dumped the eggs in the center, and began to mix it together with a fork. You can use your free hand to help rebuild the outer wall of flour like a sand-castle in the tide as you draw the flour into the egg mixture in the center. Soon, though, it's firm enough that you don't really need to worry about it leaking out.

Minutes to this step: 9. Mixing the dough goes quickly if you've got the counter space. I suppose you could do it in a bowl if you don't, too.

Knead the dough for a few minutes, folding and pressing down and out with your hands. You do want to develop whatever gluten there is in whatever flour you use, so stretch the dough out with your hands as you knead, don't just press it down to mix it. Stop when it feels fully integrated and has a nice, silky, stretchy texture.

Minutes to this step: 14. At this point, put the pasta water on to boil.

I chose to roll the pasta dough out with a rolling pin instead of using my Imperia hand-crank pasta machine because, frankly, it's faster to roll it. It does yield less consistent thickness, of course, and requires that I cut it by hand, but for something simple like this fettuccine cut, that's not only fine, I think it's desirable. The imperfect hand cutting and hand-rolled thickness variation makes it seem more rustic. If you have guests over, I suppose it's also nice because it makes it clear the pasta is hand-made without you having to announce it and look like you're digging for praise. Which, of course, you are.

Let the pasta dig for praise on your behalf.

As for the technique, well, just keep at it, rolling from the center out in all directions. You want the dough to be about 1/16" thick. If at any point it starts sticking to the pin or counter, either dust the top with flour or lift it up gently and dust the counter underneath it with flour, and keep going.

Minutes to this step: 20. Rolling does take a while.

Cut it with a sharp knife, dragging just the tip of the knife down through it so the dough doesn't bunch up as you go. Hold it steady with the other hand as you cut. This starts a bit slow but gets faster as you both develop confidence and lose patience.

Minutes to this step: 25. At this point, tear up that chicken and throw it in the sauce.

I made more pasta than I was going to eat in one sitting. The right way to store it is to pick up a handful of pasta and gently lower it, coiling, onto the counter so it forms a kind of bird's nest. The key, though, is that you don't want any two strands of pasta to be have any significant surface area in contact, or they'll stick together and won't cook thoroughly, and you'll be unpleasantly surprised during your meal by a bite of what seems more like tire rubber than delightful hand-made pasta.

Minutes to this step: 26. Hey, it's quick.

After that, all that's left is to throw some pasta in the now-boiling water, and let it cook just until it floats back to the surface of the water. Drain it, plate it, and pour some sauce on it.

Minutes to this step: 30. Voila.

30-Minute Handmade Pasta & Tomato Sauce

For the pasta
300g (scant 2c) flour -- semolina, all-purpose, whole-wheat, or some combination thereof.
3 large eggs

For the sauce
1 can of diced tomatoes
2 large cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
5 stalks of asparagus, cut into 1" lengths
1 bell pepper, chopped into 1/4" pieces
2 small jalapeño peppers, seeded and de-veined, medium dice (BHS: Wear latex gloves!!)
2T lemon basil, finely chopped
pinch salt
pinch sugar
thigh meat from one roast chicken, chopped into bite-sized pieces.

Begin with the sauce. Combine the tomatoes, garlic, asparagus, bell pepper, and jalapeño in a saucepan and place over medium-low heat.

Then, the pasta: On a counter surface dusted with flour, or in a bowl, put the flour, and make a well in the center large enough for the eggs. Crack the eggs and pour them into the well. With a fork, break the yolks and beat the eggs briefly, and then continue mixing, gradually drawing the flour into the egg mixture in the center, using your free hand to keep the well intact and prevent leakage. Continue until all the flour is mixed in.

If using a bowl, turn the dough out onto a floured countertop. If using a countertop, add flour to the surface as needed. Begin kneading the dough, folding, turning, and pressing out for several minutes until it has a silken, elastic texture.

Put a pot of water with several generous pinches of salt on to boil over high heat.

Roll the dough out on the counter with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1/16". Using the tip of a sharp knife, cut the dough into 1/4" wide strips.

At this point, add the basil, salt, sugar, and chicken to the tomato sauce.

If not using all the pasta immediately, take the pasta to be saved in handfuls. Holding them up above the counter by one end, lower the handful onto the counter, coiling it in a spiral, so it forms a little bird's nest and each strand of pasta is not sticking to any other.

When the pasta water is boiling, add the pasta and cook briefly, for just a couple minutes, until the pasta has sunk to the bottom of the pan and then floated back up to the surface.

Drain the pasta and serve, topped with a generous ladle of the sauce.

Buttermilk Scones with Peaches

Scones are one of my favorite breakfast foods to make, especially for others. In fact, only for others, because these scones, more than any other baked good I've ever made, are significantly better fresh from the oven than reheated later in a toaster. They're still good later, don't get me wrong, but the difference is really shocking.

I think of scones just like I think of espresso: Most scones you can get, at stores, coffeeshops, wherever, are really not very good. Similarly, most espresso at the average coffee shop is painfully bitter and acidic. I'm a little sensitive to being called a food snob, and I think it's happened once or twice with the coffee, but my contention is that it doesn't take a particularly sophisticated palate to appreciate the difference. It's just that a surprising number of people have never had the fortune to drink a great espresso, or eat a really excellent scone. Once they do, I contend, they'll never go back.

On Saturday, I brought a chicken pot pie to friends who just gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, and while hanging out them and talking, I mentioned scones and she said, "I don't think I like scones." I asked a few questions, suspecting she'd just never had a really good one, and indeed, she described the average scone as leathery and tough.

Never one to turn down a challenge, I went straight to Central Market to pick up the couple things I didn't already have on hand for this recipe -- some buttermilk and the currants. Only, the peaches looked so good I ditched the currants and bought a few peaches instead.

I doubled the recipe, on a whim, thinking if I was going to deliver scones to one friend on Sunday morning, I might as well deliver them to more. I brought scones to 7 different homes in south Austin, all my friends who responded to my text messages, and it made for a great Sunday morning. Actually, it ran long, so it made for a nice Sunday afternoon, too. Luckily the scones obligingly stayed warm for several hours.

This recipe is straight from the Tartine Cookbook. It is amazing. The scones are buttery, warm, crumbly and soft, just the tiniest bit tangy from the buttermilk, and with a faint crust of sugar on top to give a little crunch.

I wasn't sure how I felt about reprinting a recipe verbatim, but this is one of the book's simpler ones, I don't think it's illegal, and hopefully this post will convince at least a few of you to go buy the book. You should; it's fantastic. Tartine is one of the best bakeries in San Francisco, and their cookbook lives up to the pedigree. It's full of useful tips and observations, subtle technical details of pastry and baking, and it is worth its weight in gold if you ever want to make pies, cakes, custards, croissants, any of that. Everything I have made from the cookbook has been wonderful.

With that introduction: first, take some peaches. Pit them and then dice them into 1/4" dice or so. Be as even as you can; if they're all haphazard, some will cook more than others and your scones will be inconsistent.

Note: Like I said above, I doubled this recipe, so all my photos are of twice the amount. Don't freak out that I show four sticks of butter and later say you should use only two.

After that, the dough follows a familiar pattern. Sift together the dry, cut in the butter, then add the wet. In this case, there's not actually that much sugar, but there is quite a bit of butter.

The secret to this, just like the secret to a good butter pie crust, is not to be gentle with it, not to get all OCD about mixing everything together into one homogeneous mass. Cut the butter into small pieces so you don't need to beat the holy Hell out of it to get it to combine:

And stop mixing the butter with the flour when there are still pea-sized lumps of butter in there. Fold the buttermilk into it gently, mixing only as much as you must.

It's hard to tell from that photo, but there are still chunks of butter in there, not at all combined, still about the size of peas.

I added the peaches at the very end because I didn't want to freeze them first, and if I'd mixed them in with the buttermilk they would have gotten smashed and bled color into the dough. So I just gently cut them in with my hands at the end, when I turned the dough out onto the counter:

When you shape the dough into long rectangles to cut the scones, again, be gentle! Don't knead it. Just gently pat it into shape. Cut it into triangles:

Then transfer them, using the side of the knife like a spatula, onto a buttered cookie sheet. Brush with the melted butter and dust with sugar:

Finally, bake. Even as they go into the oven, you should still see small discrete chunks of butter in the dough.

Serve them immediately, before they cool off. Eat them plain, or with honey, or clotted cream.

BHS, 11/2/07: I emailed Tartine about posting the recipe; nobody ever responded. I went there when I was just in San Francisco, and asked the girl helping me if there was someone I could talk to about getting permission. She shrugged and said, "I'd just go ahead and do it. I'm sure it's fine." At this point, that's good enough for me. Sorry for the delay.

Buttermilk Scones
Makes 1 dozen

1 ripe peach, pitted and cut into 1/4" dice
4 3/4c all-purpose flour
1T baking powder
3/4t baking soda
1/2c granulated sugar
1 1/4t salt
1c + 1T unsalted butter, very cold
1 1/2c buttermilk
1t grated lemon zest
melted butter and crystal sugar, for topping

Preheat the oven to 400F and butter a baking sheet.

Put the peaches in the freezer briefly so that they are easier to mix with the dough.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and baking soda into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar and salt and stir to mix with a wooden spoon. Cut the butter into 1/2" cubes and scatter over the dry ingredients. Cut together, either with a pastry blender, 2 table knives, or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, but don't overmix. You want to end up with a coarse mixture with pea-sized lumps of butter visible.

Add the buttermilk all at once along with the lemon zest and mix gently with the wooden spoon. Continue to mix just until you have a dough that holds together. You still want to see some of the butter pieces at this point, which will add to the flakiness of the scones once they are baked.

Dust your work surface with flour, and turn the dough out onto it. Using your hands, pat the dough into a rectangle about 18" long, 5" wide, and 1 1/2" thick. Brush the top with the melted butter and then sprinkle with the sugar. using a chef's knife, cut the dough into 12 triangles and transfer to the prepared baking sheet.

Bake the scones until the tops are lightly browned, 25 to 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately

Southwestern Corn & Bean Salad

I was walking through Central Market the other day and for some reason glanced at the poblano peppers and it occurred to me that I hadn't had fresh corn in a long time. Of course I've got my Rancho Gordo beans around, too, that I'm always looking for an excuse to cook up, so I whipped up this quick Southwestern / Mexican influenced salad.

When I work on tricky things like macarons these posts might be interesting reads and hopefully inspire people to try their hand at more technically challenging stuff, but obviously most of my day-to-day cooking is not like that. Most of what I cook, since I am single and don't have a ton of free time, is designed to keep well in the fridge, or freeze, and be easily repurposed for other dishes, transforming its way through the week. This salad is a good example of that. When you have leftovers?

• Mix a cup of whole milk or light cream and 2 tablespoons of butter together in a saucepan over medium-high heat. When the butter is melted, add 2c of the salad and turn the heat down to medium; simmer it all together until everything softens and flavors and colors mix a bit into a hearty chowder.
  
• Flatten a chicken breast by pounding it between layers of plastic wrap, and layer some of the salad on top. Roll it up and tie it with kitchen twine. Coat with panko or some other coating, and roast at 350F until the chicken is cooked through and juices run clear when cut, roughly 20-30 minutes.
  
• Puree a can of tomatoes and mix with the salad to make a thick salsa; serve with chips.
  
• Mix some salad with chopped cooked chicken, some reduced chicken stock, and a bit of flour and spread in a prepared pie crust for an impromptu chicken pot pie.
  

The only remotely "technical" things about this salad are the removal of the corn kernels from the cobs and then the cooking of the beans. Getting the corn kernels off is easy; just use a knife and run it down the side. It's easy to tell if you're cutting into the cob (because it's about ten times tougher than the kernels!) so get as far in as you can to try to get the kernels intact without cutting into the cob.

Then, flip the knife over and run the back of the blade down the ear to get out the corn scrapings, the bits of kernel still left in the sockets and a lot of juice from the ear itself.

You can do that in advance of making the salad. Then leave the corn in a bowl in the refrigerator until you're ready to use it.

I cooked the beans very simply in this; I just sweated the shallots and poblano and garlic in some oil to soften them up a bit, added the corn kernels for a few minutes, then dumped them out of the pot and cooked the beans in their soaking liquid in the same pot without washing it (so some of the garlic and pepper made its way into the beans as they cooked.) If you're not comfortable cooking a pot of beans, I recommend starting with the Rancho Gordo cooking page; about halfway down where it says "Master Recipe List", they have their basic instructions, and now a video, too!

The only modification there is that there's no explicit mirepoix here because the beans are going into the salad. The flavored oil left in the pot should be enough.

Many people will tell you various things about cooking beans with or without salt, acids, calcium, or sugar, saying that all of those things can keep the beans from becoming fully tender. In my experience, beans come out much more tender when soaked and cooked in filtered water (I use the soaking water as the cooking water, another controversial topic -- it has never caused me any problems.) And I don't often make sweetened bean dishes (like baked beans with molasses, although they are delicious) so I can't say for certain what sugar does to the beans.

As for acids and salt, though, I have not found any substantial difference in cooking beans with or without salt, and when I cook beans with acid like tomatoes, they still become tender but the skins tend to stay more intact. For this recipe, if you're concerned about appearances, you might add some acid to the beans halfway through cooking to help keep the skins from splitting and keep the beans cohesive in the salad. I liked the idea of them getting a little mushy and adding some creaminess to the salad, so I just cooked them in plain, unadulterated water.

I used the Rancho Gordo Vaquero beans, handsome black-and-white beans, the skins reminiscent of the RG Calypso beans I fondly remember cooking several times in San Francisco. The Vaqueros are warm, meaty and assertive, with mostly deeper flavors, not a lot of green taste, a nice hearty addition to this salad, offsetting the light sweetness of the corn and slight bitterness of the barely-cooked peppers.

Here's the full spread of ingredients for the salad. Except I forgot to put in the ham. If you're so inclined, chop up a slice and throw it in with the beans as they cook. My current favorite ham is the Vande Rose Farms artisan ham; as you can see in the image, it's nicely marbled, a good slightly-cured pink color, and the texture wonderful; just fibrous enough to pull apart but elastic enough to be nicely chewy. And it's from happy, well-cared-for pigs.

Note that this photo is for a double batch of the recipe; it made an enormous amount, so in the recipe I've halved everything to make it a more reasonable yield.

I'm in love with queso fresco these days, too; Central Market has a panela barra white cheese that fries without melting; it slumps a bit but never liquefies, and it browns nicely and has a good, dense, chewy texture. (McGee observes that fresh cheeses were historically known as peasant meat, having a similar dense chewiness and with good protein and fat, but much less expensive, since the cheese is quick and easy to make.) I fried a bit, either in little slices as garnish or as cubes to mix in with the salad. It's not as salty as the more crumbly fresh cheeses, and primarily adds some welcome texture and creaminess.

Southwestern Corn & Bean Salad

Serves 8, as a salad
1/2lb dried hearty beans (black, pinto, or similar), cooked (or about 2 cans)
2T olive oil
1 small shallot, medium dice
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 poblano pepper, chopped
Kernels and scrapings from 3 medium-sized ears of corn
pinch of cumin seed
large pinch of epazote (optional; said to reduce gas from the beans)
1 small heirloom tomato, large dice
soft Mexican fresh cheese such as panela barra

Soak the beans for at least 2 hours, and up to 6 if they are older. Pour the olive oil in the bottom of a large stock pot over medium heat, and add the shallot, garlic, and chopped poblano pepper and sweat them for a minute or two, until the shallot is translucent. Add the corn kernels and cumin seed and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes, until the corn kernels soften a bit.

Pour the veggie mixture into a bowl, but leave the oil in the pan. Add the beans with their soaking liquid and enough extra water to cover them by 2", stir in the epazote (if using) and turn the heat to high, and bring the pot to a strong boil for 5 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium-low, low enough that the pan is still simmering, but barely. Cook until the beans are tender. This will depend strongly on the variety and age of the beans and length of soaking time. Taste a bean after 45 minutes and then every 15 minutes thereafter until its flesh is pleasantly tender but the skin has not disintegrated. Remove the pot from the heat and drain off most but not all of the remaining cooking liquid (don't strain the beans, you want some liquid left to mix into the salad.) Salt the beans to taste.

Mix the diced tomato with the veggie mixture, and then toss in the beans gently, trying not to smash anything in the process.

Fry slices or 1/2" dice of the cheese in a dry, non-stick skillet over high heat, flipping to get all the sides nicely browned.

Serve the salad in bowls, garnished with the fried cheese.