Birthday Pasta

Money is a little tight these days, and my mother is not the frivolous type. So, I decided that it would be appropriate to go with "a gift from the heart" this year for her birthday, and left the fancy present buying up to my dad & sister. My dad surprised her with a huge catawba tree that she's been pining after for a while... and my sister took my mom to a FANCY nursery and bought my mom a few plants that she's been dying to have for the last 15 years but never got!

So I made a bunch of coupons out of construction paper and crayons:

Sike! Are you crazy?! (The above is an image I found on the web and is not my handiwork.)

My gift from the heart was to spend the day at my mom's, do some yard work for her that she wouldn't want to do herself (digging up overgrown alchemilla plants in 90 degree heat), while she went out with my dad to work out and have a romantic lunch for 2. They're so cute.

I also planned a lovely dinner of Saffron Pasta with a Red Pepper Sauce, Almond Crusted Sturgeon, and a Warm Green Bean, Tomato, Basil Vinaigrette Salad. Oh, so yummy.

As for the pasta... I used:

3 c flour

4 farm fresh eggs

1tsp saffron

1/4 c warm water

This recipe makes enough for 4 to 6 people.

First, let the saffron sit in the warm water for about 10 minutes.

Mix the flour, eggs and saffron water until everything starts to clump together and you don't have very much loose flour in the bowl. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead it until smooth. Don't worry, your hands won't turn yellow; but they will smell heavenly. Let the dough rest for an hour. This can actually be done overnight... which is what I did, and brought the dough to room temperature before I started rolling it out.

When you're ready to roll out the pasta, divide it into 6 to 8 smaller balls. I used a hand crank pasta roller but there is no reason why you can't roll this out with a rolling pin and hand cut your pasta.

Flatten the ball a little and roll it through the widest setting, which on my crank is about 1/8 inch wide. Fold the flattened dough in half and run it through the widest setting again. Do this about 8 or 9 times. Next you can start decreasing the width, passing the dough through each width 2 or 3 times. Eventually your dough will reach your desired width, then you can cut it.

At my house, I hung the pasta on edges of large bowls to air dry a little bit, but at my mom's house, I laid the pasta on floured sheets of paper to dry a little. Laying out and drying the pasta for 30 minutes or so will prevent the pasta from sticking to itself.

At this point, you can boil how ever much pasta you want to eat for 3-4 minutes. The rest of the uncooked pasta can be put into containers and frozen... Then when you're ready for another pasta meal, you can throw the frozen pasta directly into boiling water for 3-5 minutes!

The Red Pepper Sauce has only 6 ingredients:

2 roasted red bell peppers

2 shallots

4 fresh off the vine Roma tomatoes

1/2 c wine (Probably a Chardonnay, though I used our homemade blackberry wine... mmm)

3 tbs fresh chopped basil

1c freshly grated parmesan cheese to stir in when serving.

Slice or dice the shallots and get them golden in a pan with a bit of olive oil on a med-high heat.

Remove the skin and seeds from the roasted peppers, roughly chop them and add them to the shallots. Chop the tomatoes and add them to the peppers and shallots. Stir around to get the heat through the tomatoes, then add the wine and cook for about 2 minutes. Transfer this stuff into a bowl, and have at it with an immersion blender until smooth. Pour the sauce on freshly boiled (and drained) pasta, then toss with the cheese and basil. Done!

This sauce is naturally sweet, but light, and goes nicely with the delicate flavor of the saffron in the pasta.

xoxo

happy food!

post script:

A note about salt.

I don't use salt in a lot of my recipes, especially when there is an ingredient that contains salt. I decided the cheese has enough sodium for this dish... 1 cup of parmesan cheese has about 1300-1500 mg of sodium! The average person can have 2000 mg a day, but I aim to have less than 1500 mg a day. It is difficult to consume a small amount of sodium when eating prepared foods; 1 slice of bread has 150 mg... double that for a sandwich... and don't forget the mustard (100 mg) and mayo (100 mg)... and you already have 500 mg which is still before the cheese (170 mg for 1 slice of havarti) and lunch meat (smoked turkey 1 slice 300 mg!). You get the point, right?

I think salt intake is really important to watch out for. Especially when high blood pressure is so predominant in both America and Japan which is where I spend most of my time. My goal is to live a long healthy life without depending on drugs to keep me alive! el fin.