Cooking With Maddie Newsletter #4
Fresh Pasta
Hi friends!
This week’s Cooking With Maddie newsletter is coming at you live from my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. Cue Nelly’s St. Louie. For those of you who live away from family, you’ll understand me when I say being home is THE. BEST. FEELING. I get to spend real quality time with the people who mean the most to me. That usually looks like everyone crammed on the couch watching god-knows-what on television. This week, it’s Love Island and Longmire. Those are similar, right?
When I’m at home, I get to recharge in an environment that’s filled with comfort and familiarity. The time is split between quiet hours reading on the front porch (yes, I finally finished Harry Potter) and noisy late nights filled with laughter. Of course I have to deal with the awful humidity of the midwest and all the mosquitos that come with it, but in exchange, I get to be a real back home baller. And the food… well, there’s a reason I gain weight every time I step through the door.
When it comes to cooking, there’s definitely some perks to being at home. The first is that someone else covers the grocery bill. Thanks mom! The second is that I get to use my family’s Architectural Digest-worthy kitchen. We have a XL refrigerator, which means you can have infinite condiments, drinks and leftovers at the ready. And I would be remiss if I didn’t call attention to my Aunt Julie’s vegetable garden. This garden is no ordinary garden. There’s enough tomatoes to feed an entire village caprese salads. She’s growing beets, fennel, broccoli. There’s peppers– mild ones, spicy ones, and the ones in between. Every herb imaginable is growing in bulk. She even has a baby watermelon in the works.
But the best part of cooking at home is cooking with people who also love to cook. My aunt, mother, cousins, we all have this shared passion of making really delicious food that brings people together. And we do it in a really joyful way. The kitchen is always filled with laughter and sunshine. There’s always extra seats at the table for last-minute drop-ins, and you can always, always count on a dessert to be present. This week, it was a peach cobbler. Again, you can see why my clothes are all tight after spending time at home.
This week, we cooked in the most joyful way imaginable– with our hands. That’s right, we made homemade pasta.
We took a pasta making class at the Kitchen Conservatory, where we learned all the ins and outs of pasta making. We were reminded that the most joyful cooking experiences don’t have to be complicated. In fact, with fresh pasta, simplicity rules all. For starters, all you need is flour, eggs and your pinchers. That’s it. You mix the dough by hand, getting to feel like a kid whose parents finally let them play with their food.
We had so much fun getting back to the basics that we made another batch of fresh pasta a few nights later. Who said you can’t eat pasta every night? We stuck to the simple recipe below, but this time, we made a homegrown tomato sauce to go with it.
For the pasta, you’ll need:
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups of all-purpose flour
To make the pasta, place the flour on a clean surface. Create a well in the middle for your eggs. Add the eggs, and start forming the dough from the inside-out, slowing incorporating more flour. Continue to form together until the flour is completely incorporated. If the dough seems too wet, add more flour, one tablespoon at a time. If the dough seems too dry, add water, one tablespoon at a time. Briefly knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes before rolling. If you want to be boring and use a stand mixer, you can follow these instructions, but I highly recommend doing it by hand because it’s way more fun.
For the sauce, we used:
Cherry tomatoes
Extra virgin olive oil
Pinch of salt
3 garlic cloves, smashed
White or red onion, diced
Red pepper flakes
Tomato paste, 3 tablespoons
2-3 anchovies or a dash of fish sauce
Splash of Vermouth or wine of your choice
Water, ½ cup
Fresh cracked pepper
Parmesan cheese
Basil
For the pasta sauce, we riffed off Alison Roman’s Roasted Tomato and Anchovy Bucatini recipe, which you can find in her book, Dining In. Start by roasting your tomatoes in a pan with a lip around the edge, so you don’t lose all your juices. We used a 9x13 glass pyrex. Coat your fresh tomatoes and smashed garlic cloves with olive oil and a pinch of salt. Roast at 425 degrees F for 20-30 minutes. You want the tomatoes to be blistered and roasted. I like to smash them with the back of a wooden spoon every 10 minutes or so.
Bring a pot of salted water to boil. The water should be salty like the sea.
With the tomatoes roasting, start rolling out your rested pasta dough. You can roll this by hand with a rolling pin (and if you don’t have a rolling pin, use a bottle of wine. I know you have one of those!) until you reach your desired thickness. Then slice with a pizza cutter. If the dough is sticking at all, dust with some flour to make it easier to manage. We were lucky enough to have a pasta machine to help us roll out the dough and slice into spaghetti noodles. Once your noodles are cut, dust with flour and set aside.
At this point, your roasted tomatoes should be done. Take them out and let them cool. Bring a pan to medium heat, and add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of your pan. Add your onion and a pinch of red pepper flakes. The more you add, the spicier it’ll be. Once onions are translucent and soft, add the tomato paste and cook until it takes on a rusty-red color. If you were following Alison’s recipe at this point, you’d add your anchovies until they dissolved. Unfortunately, we did not have anchovies at the house, so we added a dash of fish sauce instead. See, cooking can be flexible!
At this point, add your Vermouth or wine. We used Vermouth because we had it lying around, but feel free to use whatever alcohol you’d like to loosen up the bits of sauce that’s stuck to the bottom of the pan. Add your roasted tomatoes next, including all its juices. We took out the garlic at this point, but if you love garlic, keep it in! Smash your tomatoes even more with the back of your spoon. Then add water bit-by-bit until you reach your desired consistency. We used about ½ cup.
With the sauce simmering on low, we dropped our fresh pasta into salted boiling water. With this fresh of pasta, it’ll only take 30 seconds to a minute to cook through. Reserve 1-2 cups of pasta water. Once cooked, transfer your noodles to your pan sauce. Gently incorporate the noodles to the sauce, adding pasta water along the way if you need to thin it out. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
We topped our pasta with grated parmesan, a drizzle of olive oil and basil.
I highly, highly recommend making your own pasta. Just try it! Don’t get me wrong— I still love dry boxed pasta. You’ll never see my pantry without it. But after learning how simple and fun making you own pasta can be, I do plan on doing it more often.
In addition to the multiple pasta dishes we’ve consumed this week, there’s so many other things giving me life, starting with seeing my goddaughter belt out Let It Go on this karaoke machine. It’s driving under a double rainbow on our way to the airport. It’s Bon Appetit announcing its new Editor-in-Chief. It was finally making this Spicy Coconut Grilled Chicken Thighs recipe. It was this cute-ass martini chiller bowl (if you know what these are actually called and where I can find one, please message me!) that they served alongside my dirty martini at dinner with my grandparents. And lastly, it was riding on the back of a motorcycle on the perfect summer day.
Wish I was with you,
Maddie