Duck Egg Pasta

Earlier this week, my local butcher, Marin Sun Farms in Oakland, California, ran out of chicken eggs, but the shop had cartons of duck eggs. So, when life gives you duck eggs, make duck egg pasta. Each of the duck eggs weighed about 85 grams. For comparison, the United States Department of Agriculture grades a chicken egg weighing between 57 and 64 grams as large.

Although I have a few bigoli recipes that use duck eggs, I opted to follow an egg noodle recipe in SPQR [2012] by Shelley Lindgren and Matthew Accarrino with Kate Leahy. One of the best pasta cookbooks in my collection, SPQR lists ingredients by weight and volume. This made using the duck eggs a snap. Accarrino's egg noodle recipe calls for 250 grams 00 flour for 220 grams egg yolks (from 11 chicken eggs) and 5 grams of extra virgin olive oil. I weighed out the duck egg yolks and 7 yolks weighted 242 grams. I removed 22 grams of the yolks and I was ready to make my dough. Here is Accarrino’s recipe for egg noodles.

250 grams / scant 2 cups 00 flour

2 grams / ½ teaspoon kosher salt

220 grams / 11 egg yolks

5 grams / 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

To make the egg noodles: In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the flour and salt. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and olive oil. With the mixer running on low speed, drizzle in the egg-oil mixture. Mix the dough for 2 to 3 minutes, then turn onto the counter and knead by hand for several minutes; it should look bright yellow and feel firm. Flatten the dough into a rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap and leave on the counter for 30 minutes to soften and hydrate.

I divided my duck egg dough, which weighed about 463 grams, into two pieces; I used half the dough to make tagliarini and the other half to make corzetti stampati. SPQR’s egg noodle recipe worked well for both shapes. The duck egg pasta had a deep yellow color and a firm bite that characterizes egg yolk noodles. As for flavor, the pasta tasted rich but not appreciably different than noodles made with chicken egg yolks.

Corzetti Stampati

Last year I shared a recipe for stracenate, a flat, rectangular-shaped pasta from Southern Italy.  Stracenate has a unique decorative pattern created by pressing pieces of pasta onto a carved wooden board called a cavarola. Let’s now move up the Italian Peninsula to explore a similarly distinctive regional pasta most closely associated with Liguria. Corzetti stampati’s large, coin-like shape is made by first cutting a circle out of a sheet of pasta and then embossing the disc with an ingenious wooden tool aptly called a corzetti stamp.

Research suggests fingers rather than wooden stamps indented the earliest version of corzetti, which dates back to the thirteenth century. A similar finger-pressed (and a factory-made) shape survives to this day and still goes by the name corzetti without the stampati qualifier; it resembles, to my eye, a stylized figure 8.

By the Italian Renaissance, court pasta makers used carved wooden stamps to create corzetti stampati. Oretta Zanini De Vita writes in her Encyclopedia of Pasta [2009] that in addition to heraldry, early corzetti stamps “bore a little stylized cross…other molds were incised with geometric and vegetal motifs, or with references to the celebration for which they were made.”

Today corzetti stampati appears to be enjoying a modest renaissance. Until recently recipes to make fresh corzetti stampati were few and far between. Why the increase in popularity? The Internet deserves some credit. Ten or more years ago locating a corzetti stamp in the United States was about as easy as finding a cavarola (i.e., it wasn’t). Now a Google search turns up a handful of websites that sell corzetti stamps. Some of the most handsome stamps currently available come from Pietro Picetti (here), whose workshop is located in La Spezia, Liguria.

The dough recipes I’ve collected over the years to make fresh corzetti stampati range from using a single egg to incorporating a lot of egg yolks. Which version you choose is a matter of taste and preference. The following recipe, which serves 4, is more rich than lean.

• 220 grams Giusto’s Organic Baker’s Choice Unbleached Flour
• 12 egg yolks from large eggs

Follow the instructions from my pappardelle post (here) with the following differences: use egg yolks in place of whole eggs and knead the dough for at least 20 to 30 minutes, dusting with flour as necessary. When rolling the pasta aim for a finished sheet that is approximately 2mm thick.

Lightly flour both sides of your finshed pasta sheet. Using the concave portion of the corzetti stamp’s base, cut out discs from the pasta sheet. Flour the corzetti stamp’s flat, carved surfaces. Place a pasta disc between these two surfaces and firmly press the handle and base together to coin the disc. Repeat with remaining discs.

Place the newly minted corzetti stampati on a baking sheet coated with course semolina flour. Allow the pasta to rest for approximately 1 hour before cooking. This brief drying period helps the pasta to retain its decorative pattern when cooked. Boil in salted water (approximating the taste of seawater) until the corzetti stampati are done; cooking time will vary based upon the pasta’s thickness and dryness.

To accentuate its Ligurian lineage, consider serving corzetti stampati with a basil pesto (adding green beans to the dish if you like). If you want to try another classic combination, finish the cooked coins in a butter sauce containing fresh marjoram, pine nuts and Parmigiano-Reggiano.