Pasta Class at Ramekins in Sonoma, CA
I’ve tried several times to make my own pasta, and the results, while not catastrophic, have never been culinary delights. In fact, my most recent effort was to create an “inside out” beef stroganoff. A typical stroganoff involves braising some chuck steak for several hours with onions and mushrooms, and then adding sour cream to the meat broth and serving over noodles tossed with butter. My idea was to take the beef and onion mixture after its cooked and create a filling for a filled pasta like an oversized ravioli. The gravy is made as usual by adding sour cream to the beef broth, and then drizzling over the raviolis. Well, lets just say that while the idea was good, the execution was poor. The pasta was rubbery and falling apart, and the beef filling became saturated with water during cooking. Blech. Fortunately for the mouths that are dependent on me for survival, I had set aside some of the beef and was able to cook dried noodles from a box too create a facsimile of the traditional version of stroganoff.
It was this experience that headed me down the path of getting some instruction before I made another attempt. Dave and I took a class at Ramekins, taught by Carlo Cavallo, the executive chef and owner of Meritage in Sonoma. Chef Carlo is a dynamic, entertaining instructor and he managed to reduce pasta making to just a few key rules. First, we learned that the pasta dough can be made entirely in a kitchen aid mixer; just throw in the ingredients with the dough hook and hit the button and let it run for 3-4 minutes until a ball forms. When making the pasta sheets for filled pasta, the thickness is critical. Too thin and the pasta tears or the filling will soak through; too thick and its doughy and pasty. Making a coarse chop of the filling helps immensely in getting nicely shaped pastas that don’t tear; and don’t overfill the pastas! Using an egg wash to seal the edges of the pasta pillow was more effective than using water. And finally, the pasta only needs to cook for about three minutes to be cooked through and just the right amount of “chew” to the cooked pastas.
A few days after the class I whipped up a batch of raviolis, with two different fillings, one of crab and goat cheese and the other using shitake mushrooms. The pasta came out terrific, and when topped with a quickie “cream and blue cheese” sauce, tasted great. A major success compared to my stroganoff attempt!
– Chris