I was reading a few reviews this week about "unusable" cookbooks: The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. Alinea. Under Pressure. The French Laundry. (Insert record-scratching sound in your brain here...) I have yet to see anyone succeed with The Big Fat Duck, so I'll concede that point... for now. There are
people cooking their way through Alinea, and even
I have now successfully
cooked from Under Pressure... but these are books that are not designed to be accessible, and I can see why many home cooks would be turned off by the expensive equipment and (especially in the case of Alinea) chemical-purchasing issues... Not unusable, but not particularly concerned about the fact that they may scare away the average home cook. (I always prefer complicated-to-the-point-of-near-impossiblity to overly-dumbed-down when it comes to cookbooks, so I don't mind this at all...) The French Laundry Cookbook, though? This book is a thing of beauty. The recipes aren't dumbed down, but they are also completely achievable (budget permitting). This isn't a book where you'll be thumbing through it one day and say "Hey. Look at that. I have all of the ingredients for this dish sitting in my fridge and pantry right now... Might as well whip up a batch..." but it's beautiful, inspirational, and actually quite accessible. This pasta dish is the perfect example of something that is so easy it's almost silly, but is also bafflingly delicious... Let's start with my favorite vegetable: fava beans. These are fully peeled (as I've posted about
before), blanched, and laid out on a towel to dry...
They next go into the food processor with some fresh bread crumbs...
... and are puréed until the mixture forms a ball.
A bit of mascarpone is added, and things are puréed until smooth.
Season to taste, and that's it. That's your filling. Next up: Pasta. Thomas Keller uses an absurd number of eggs in his dough, resulting in a dough that is incredibly supple and a gorgeous shade of yellow. You make a well... add the egg, egg yolks, milk, and olive oil, then start incorporating flour with your fingertips...
When the dough becomes too stiff for that, you can begin cutting it together with a board scraper until you can form it into a ball, then knead for 10-15 minutes and... dough!
This was a good time to use my new pasta roller attachment for my KitchenAid (thanks, parents!).
Holy crap, you guys.
I used to make pasta with my manual, hand-cranked pasta maker, and it’s sort of prohibitively obnoxious to do on your own (finding the right thing to clamp it to, trying not to let the dough bunch up as you feed it into the machine with one hand, crank with the other, and realize that you would need a third hand to help guide it out of the machine…).
The attachment made the process fantastically quick and easy, though, and I could see myself tossing together homemade pasta for all kinds of random cravings now, rather than just for special occasions.
Awesome. The dough is rolled out fairly thin…
We're making agnolotti with these sheets, which have always been problematic for me (and apparently I'm
not alone...). This time, though? This time I pretty much nailed it. I think I owe this to the sense of total detachment I was experiencing at the moment, brought on by
cooking fatigue. By the time I was rolling out my pasta on Sunday, I honestly couldn't care less what the damn things looked like. I was going to be eating my main course at around 11pm, and it wasn't going to be any less delicious for being all janky-looking... Apparently that attitude is exactly what it takes to make proper agnolotti. Take note: the key to making agnolotti is not giving a shit. We start out with a tube of the filling piped down the sheet of pasta...
Fold one side over to seal the filling in...
Next comes the pinching process, which I've read Keller's instructions for approximately 100 times and have never understood until last night... This leaves you with lovely pillows of fava bean goodness...
Cut these apart and toss them onto a sheet to freeze (for use later that night or in the future) or use immediately if you're not in the middle of a
corn soup situation...
Here mine are out of the freezer and ready for cooking:
We're pretty much there. Now it's just a matter of that curry emulsion. Curry powder, scallions, chicken stock, cream, crème fraîche, and (Amish) butter, coming together to approximate heaven.
The curry powder is toasted first, after which the scallions are added and stirred over the heat for about a minute...
In goes the cream, stock, and crème fraîche.
The mixture needs to reduce to about a half a cup at this point... during which time the color and the flavor intensify.
Finally, you whisk in the (Amish) butter, and find yourself with a delicate-yet-intense sauce. This is supposed to go into a blender to emulsify, but mine wasn't broken and I was too tired to wash my blender for the fourth time that day, so I called it good here.
There should also be blanched ramps (I substituted scallions) and some garlic chives (I substituted flowering chives) for garnish, but that's it. Easy, right? Dinner comes out looking something like this:
The pasta was great, and I'll definitely be making it again... but let's talk about the curry emulsion. Wow. Just... wow. Quick, easy, and unbelievably delicious. I can see using it in several other applications, but I'll definitely be coming back to this one, as well. After a long day in the kitchen, this was a perfect reminder that elegant, amazing food doesn't have to be exhausting to make. It was also a good reminder that I should delve into The French Laundry Cookbook more often... If you have the book (or if you want to just use the copy of the recipe
here), go make this as soon as you can get your hands on a stash of fava beans. You'll be glad you did. Mmmmm.... Curry Emulsion...
As I may have mentioned once or twice, I'm a little obsessed with fava beans. It may also have become clear that I'm a little obsessed with Thomas Keller's recipes. Based on those two obsessions, it's a little confusing that I've made Keller's Sweet Potato Agnolotti with Sage Cream, Brown Butter, and Prosciutto several times, but have somehow never gotten around to making his Fava Bean Agnolotti with Curry Emulsion... until now...
I was reading a few reviews this week about "unusable" cookbooks: The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. Alinea. Under Pressure. The French Laundry. (Insert record-scratching sound in your brain here...) I have yet to see anyone succeed with The Big Fat Duck, so I'll concede that point... for now. There are people cooking their way through Alinea, and even I have now successfully cooked from Under Pressure... but these are books that are not designed to be accessible, and I can see why many home cooks would be turned off by the expensive equipment and (especially in the case of Alinea) chemical-purchasing issues... Not unusable, but not particularly concerned about the fact that they may scare away the average home cook. (I always prefer complicated-to-the-point-of-near-impossiblity to overly-dumbed-down when it comes to cookbooks, so I don't mind this at all...) The French Laundry Cookbook, though? This book is a thing of beauty. The recipes aren't dumbed down, but they are also completely achievable (budget permitting). This isn't a book where you'll be thumbing through it one day and say "Hey. Look at that. I have all of the ingredients for this dish sitting in my fridge and pantry right now... Might as well whip up a batch..." but it's beautiful, inspirational, and actually quite accessible. This pasta dish is the perfect example of something that is so easy it's almost silly, but is also bafflingly delicious... Let's start with my favorite vegetable: fava beans. These are fully peeled (as I've posted about before), blanched, and laid out on a towel to dry...
They next go into the food processor with some fresh bread crumbs...
... and are puréed until the mixture forms a ball.
A bit of mascarpone is added, and things are puréed until smooth.
Season to taste, and that's it. That's your filling. Next up: Pasta. Thomas Keller uses an absurd number of eggs in his dough, resulting in a dough that is incredibly supple and a gorgeous shade of yellow. You make a well... add the egg, egg yolks, milk, and olive oil, then start incorporating flour with your fingertips...
When the dough becomes too stiff for that, you can begin cutting it together with a board scraper until you can form it into a ball, then knead for 10-15 minutes and... dough!
This was a good time to use my new pasta roller attachment for my KitchenAid (thanks, parents!). Holy crap, you guys. I used to make pasta with my manual, hand-cranked pasta maker, and it’s sort of prohibitively obnoxious to do on your own (finding the right thing to clamp it to, trying not to let the dough bunch up as you feed it into the machine with one hand, crank with the other, and realize that you would need a third hand to help guide it out of the machine…). The attachment made the process fantastically quick and easy, though, and I could see myself tossing together homemade pasta for all kinds of random cravings now, rather than just for special occasions. Awesome. The dough is rolled out fairly thin…
We're making agnolotti with these sheets, which have always been problematic for me (and apparently I'm not alone...). This time, though? This time I pretty much nailed it. I think I owe this to the sense of total detachment I was experiencing at the moment, brought on by cooking fatigue. By the time I was rolling out my pasta on Sunday, I honestly couldn't care less what the damn things looked like. I was going to be eating my main course at around 11pm, and it wasn't going to be any less delicious for being all janky-looking... Apparently that attitude is exactly what it takes to make proper agnolotti. Take note: the key to making agnolotti is not giving a shit. We start out with a tube of the filling piped down the sheet of pasta...
Fold one side over to seal the filling in...
Next comes the pinching process, which I've read Keller's instructions for approximately 100 times and have never understood until last night... This leaves you with lovely pillows of fava bean goodness...
Cut these apart and toss them onto a sheet to freeze (for use later that night or in the future) or use immediately if you're not in the middle of a corn soup situation...
Here mine are out of the freezer and ready for cooking:
We're pretty much there. Now it's just a matter of that curry emulsion. Curry powder, scallions, chicken stock, cream, crème fraîche, and (Amish) butter, coming together to approximate heaven.
The curry powder is toasted first, after which the scallions are added and stirred over the heat for about a minute...
In goes the cream, stock, and crème fraîche.
The mixture needs to reduce to about a half a cup at this point... during which time the color and the flavor intensify.
Finally, you whisk in the (Amish) butter, and find yourself with a delicate-yet-intense sauce. This is supposed to go into a blender to emulsify, but mine wasn't broken and I was too tired to wash my blender for the fourth time that day, so I called it good here.
There should also be blanched ramps (I substituted scallions) and some garlic chives (I substituted flowering chives) for garnish, but that's it. Easy, right? Dinner comes out looking something like this:
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