Italian Regional Cuisine: Northwest (Pasta Wowee!)

Today's menu consisted of Sfogliata de Radicchio (bitter greens and olives sautéed and baked on a puff pastry), Riso al Gorgonzola (Blue Cheese Risotto), Calamari Ripieni de Gamberi (Grilled Squid stuffed with shrimp), Costolette alla Valdostana (breaded veal chop stuffed with fontina cheese), Ragu de Cinghiala (Wild Boar Ragu with papadelle pasta), and Cipolline Agro Dolce (sweet and sour onions). Chef K lectured a bit about today's work, then we took a quiz (for which we got the questions for yesterday).

Dirty Dave and Chef Jr were absent today, so it was on Speedy, Dora the Explorer, and myself to tackle the work. Dora took the squid and the radicchio puff pastry, Speedy made the ragu and the veal chops, and I did the pasta, the risotto, and the onions.

The sweet and sour onions was a simple, pretty recipe. Blanche and shock the little onions and peel. Combine sugar, red wine vinegar, a few sage leaves, extra virgin olive oil, and salt in a gratin dish (it looked trippy, dude) then bake to caramelize the sugar. The were held to room temperature and I'm embarrassed to say that I forgot to taste them.

Pasta dough has to rest, so I made the dough next. I went off the reservation and made it from memory of the recipe I use from Batalli's cook book. Yesterday, Chef K had me make pasta with AP flour, 2 whole eggs, and olive oil. Today I grabbed the same amount of high-gluten bread flour, added 4 egg yolks to the 2 eggs, and cut the oil. Though yesterday she claimed too much kneading would make it tough, I went nuts kneading it. The dough did feel tough, but it felt right to me.

While that rested, I moved on to the risotto. Funny thing with risotto, there are a million different kinds of risotto, but the base is always the same. Sweat aromatics in butter (shallots here), sauté the rice, deglaze with booze (white wine here), then stir in liquid in small amounts until absorbed (chicken stock, here). Once I got it to the right tenderness, blended in a a sauce consisting of Gorgonzola melted in heavy cream. Through in some whole butter and salt, and Bob's your uncle.

I made this in advance of service time, and held it on the stove. When I went to serve, it had turned to glue so I hit it with more chicken stock and and loosened nicely....but maybe too much. Chef K tasted it and said it was good, but something in her face told me she had reservations. When pressed, she said it wasn't as creamy as it should be; then I told her what I had done to revive and warm it. She suggested next time, hit it with warm heavy cream instead of stock. Point taken.

I rolled out the pasta, it had an attractive yellow sheen that set it apart from the other pastas in the class. Chef K demo'd how to cut into the wide papadelle strips by hand -- loosely roll the sheets into tubes and delicately cut across without mushing it down, easy peasy. Boiled it for 90 seconds, hit it with Speedy's ragu immediately. Chef K really liked it, and I explained to her what I did. She was surprised that it wasn't tough. The ragu was good, but Dirty Kim's was better -- sorry, Speedy!

I avoided Dora's dishes all together for health reasons, but I sampled them from other groups, all pretty weird but yummy. The veal chops were extremely decadent -- breaded huge chops on the bone with oozy smelly cheese when you cut into it.

Tomorrow we shuffle off to the Northeast of Italy.

ADDENDA:
Yoga kicked my ass this evening, between the sweating, the people putting their ankles behind their butts, and generally getting hungrier and thirstier over the 90 minutes. Body did feel invigorated after, though. Kinda wish I ate some sort of lunch, but I just wasn't hungry during the afternoon, particularly working with the hospital-like food at God's Love.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, organic chex with the good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 11am, hand cut papadelle with wild boar risotto, a few spoonfuls of risotto, a few bites of fontina-stuffed veal chop, a fistful of pastry class' cookies, water, 2 bowl

DINNER: 8pm, vegan chocolate chip cookie, quinoa, hijiki and tempeh with tahini sauce, cup of dahl, apple fizzy lizzy, water, 1.5 bowl
Snicklesnackattack!!

EVENING WATERING: 10pm, quart of water