From the Garden: Fava Bean Agnolotti with Curry Emulsion

While I was still crashing with my parents, I had the brilliant idea that "we" should grow our own fava beans in their amazing garden. 

I say "we" in the sense that I came up with the idea, ordered the seeds, then sat in a reclining patio chair with a glass of wine while I watched my mom plant them... I left the rest of the work to my mom, but she was kind enough to bring me the bulk of the harvest anyway...

As a "thank-you," I invited my parents over to experience Thomas Keller's Fava Bean Agnolotti with Curry Emulsion.  Details of the (incredible) sauce and a link to the recipe are in that post, so I'll just cover some pasta details here.  I blanched a cup and a half of fava beans, then dried on a tea towel...

I made a couple changes to the recipe...  I only had sourdough bread on hand, so the fresh bread crumbs that went into the filling were sourdough bread crumbs.  I also used homemade mascarpone-like-stuff (made by straining homemade crème fraîche through butter muslin) rather than expensive store-bought mascarpone.  Everything went into a food processor and came out creamy, smooth, and delicious...  Thomas Keller says you can make this a couple days ahead if you need to, so I made it a day in advance... (I'm all about trying to spend just small bursts of time in the kitchen spread over a few days rather than marathon sessions...)

I went into detail on the pasta dough last time...  It's the typical Thomas Keller dough where you use 6 egg yolks plus a whole egg (and a bit of milk and olive oil) for less than two cups of flour.  I did something this time, though, that I'm sure Thomas Keller would be quite ashamed of: I made the dough in my stand mixer.  I just can't spend 10-15 minutes kneading pasta dough in the kitchen these days, so it was a shortcut that was necessary in order for me to be able to make this recipe... and, honestly, the dough was perfection anyway...  I'll probably never knead it by hand again.  I used a pastry bag to pipe the filling into my thinly rolled-out pasta...

The pasta is rolled over the filling, then you push down flat spaces between lumps of filling.  This whole part of the instructions was baffling to me the first couple times I made agnolotti, but I totally have the hang of it now...

I used a squiggly pasta-cutter-thingy to separate the dough into individual agnolotti...

Then tossed them onto a floured baking sheet and straight into the freezer.  This step can be done a few days ahead, as well, and the agnolotti can be cooked straight from the freezer when you're ready to go...

This is by far the best-looking batch I've ever made...  Even better, when I threw them into the boiling salted water, every single one of them maintained their structural integrity all the way to the plate.  Woot!  (That's them below, post-cooking, just after tossing them on top of the finished sauce of curry powder, scallions, cream, crème fraîche, butter, butter, and butter...)

I'm stealing the picture of the finished product from last time for the shot below, since I didn't want to make my honored guests wait for picture-taking before we dug in...

This recipe really is incredibly easy (as far as Thomas Keller recipes go), and is unbelievably delicious and decadent.  I don't know if using home-grown favas made it taste any better, but it certainly felt way cooler...  If only fava beans were in season year-round I would be making this for guests constantly. I guess I'll have to try other fillings in those next sad long months between fava bean seasons...