moflo-your online guide to Florence

Having obviously read the Rainbow Ravioli recipe featured earlier in the Food & Drink magazine, you know how to make the dough for most of the different pastas in Italy (there are over 1,000 so don’t try to memorize them all), let’s talk about how you can dress up some of those different shapes and sizes you’ve stretched and rolled out.

If you enjoy making pasta but hate how strenuous it is or how long it takes, there are a couple of tools to make your life easier. The most obvious and cost efficient choice would be the handcranked pasta machine. Averaging around 20euro this machine does take a bit of practice requiring simultaneous moves between your “cranking hand” and your “feeding hand”.

Once mastered, however, this medieval-looking torture device can turn your dough into noodles in less than ten minutes, as opposed to an hour if you were rolling by hand.

There are, of course other contraptions that fit to basic Stand Mixers (KitchenAid, Cuisinart, $$$)

The add-ons resemble the one above, but eliminate the hand-cranking, freeing the other hand to join in on the “feeding” and “receiving” choreography… use your imagination…

At the risk of sounding too much like a consumer reports article, let’s move on to some different types of pasta dough, since you’ve mastered the basic recipe… right? I know I’ve mentioned some of this before in my Rainbow Ravioli recipe, but let’s recap. Pasta can be colored with natural food colorings, such as squid ink for black, tomato paste for red, beet juice for purple, spinach for green, saffron for yellow, and chocolate for brown. I receive a lot of questions regarding pasta coloring and when to add the color. After you’ve broken your eggs into the flour and are ready to knead with your clean hands, add the color ingredient and watch your pasta become much more unique. In retrospect, the Rainbow Ravioli recipe was to show you how you can manipulate the colors to make really artistic pasta. You don’t have to make your colored pasta look like an Andy Warhol creation, though. Spinach infused pasta or squid ink pasta can make for wonderful pasta and sauce combinations.

Linguine al Nero di Seppia con Salsa di Calamari ed Aglio (Squid Ink Pasta)

Note: names of recipes in Italian are formed by mentioning every single ingredient used.

Serves 4-5

For the Linguine (typical pasta to be served with seafood):

400g semolina flour

4 eggs (uova)

Squid ink (“Seppia di Calamari” found in any supermarket)

Pinch salt

For the sauce:

600g squid (calamari)

6 garlic (aglio – pron. “aio”) cloves, diced

½ cup parsley (prezzemolo)

1 glass white wine (hopefully you know how to say this in Italian by now)

Since you already know the pasta making process, the only added steps I’m going to tell you are:

1. Add the squid ink after you’ve amalgamated the flour with the eggs.

2. Cut the noodles into ½ mm width to make Linguine

Cleaning squid like everything else I say, is an art. After you clean about 500 of them every day for 6 months you can consider yourself an official member of the Squid Cleaners Guild (SCG), but also a part of Washing Hands Addicts Anonymous (WHAA). Anyway, since bad humor is not part of the recipe, follow these steps to clean a squid (warning: Graphic!):

1. If the squid still has its purple skin, peel the “wings” from the body and the skin should remove easily. Save the wings as they can be added to the sauce.

2. Once your squid looks white, take your thumb and forefinger and pinch above the head underneath the hood. (Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself). Carefully wiggle the head back and forth while gently pulling out the contents from within the hood.

3. Find the sharp point of “plastic” that is protruding from the cone’s opening and pull that out. It will look like a long piece of translucent plastic.

4. Pinch the tentacles below the eyes (avoid rupturing eyeballs as it is messy) and separate them from the head. Discard the head and intestines.

5. Remove the plastic beak from within the tentacles.

6. Thoroughly wash out the cones sticking your fingers inside to clean (not for people with an easy gag reflex).

7. Cut your cones into rings up to an inch thick.

On to the sauce; add the olive oil and diced garlic to a pan and gently simmer the garlic until soft, avoiding to brown or burn the garlic (add a little water if needed). Throw in the squid rings, tentacles, wings, and salt. Sautee for 1 minute (ONLY!!) or else it will become tough. Add the glass of wine and let it evaporate for 2 minutes. Remove from the fire and add the parsley and cooked pasta, tossing to coat with sauce.

Tagliatelle agli Spinaci con Rucola e Gorgonzola (Fettuccine with Arugula/Rocket and Gorgonzola)

Serves 4-5

For the tagliatelle (pron. taia-telley):

400g semolina

4 eggs (uova)

1 cup cooked spinach (spinaci) puree, drained of water

Pinch of salt

For the sauce:

180g mushrooms (funghi champignons), quartered

3 tomatoes (pomodori), diced

300g young gorgonzola (dolce), cut into pieces

1 handful arrugula/rocket (rucola)

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Make the pasta dough as usual, adding spinach purée.

Heat oil in a pan until hot, not smoking, and add the mushrooms. Sautee for 5 minutes until glistening and add the tomatoes and arrugula/rocket. Sauteé for 2 more minutes and add gorgonzola pieces, stirring constantly until melted. Remove from the fire and toss the pasta in the sauce to coat evenly. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot while cheese is melted.

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