Spaghetti Quadri

After buying my Bottene torchio pasta press from Emiliomiti [here], I purchased a bronze die to make spaghetti quadri, a thin square noodle meant to resemble maccheroni alla chitarra, the traditional pasta of Abruzzo. To make authentic maccheroni alla chitarra, you roll a thick-ish sheet of egg pasta over closely spaced wires strung length-wise across a rectangular wooden box called a guitar (chitarra). In Italy Dish by Dish [2011], Monica Sartoni Cesari writes that maccheroni alla chitarra “is a relatively new shape—well, for Italy. It dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century. Before the invention of the chitarra,…the same shape was made by cutting the pasta with a shoemaker’s hammer (rintrocilo).”

What a spaghetti quadri die lacks in character when compared to a shoemaker’s hammer or a zither-like box, it makes up in efficiency: attach bronze die to torchio and add dough; insert and screw down piston; harvest square spaghetti.  Pretty simple in concept, but the key to success lies in the dough. Before settling on the recipe, below, I had a good number of misses with this die. Looking back on my notes, I think the problems stemmed from my (1) flour blend, and (2) liquid-to-flour ratio. (Not much left to get wrong, I’d say.…) I finally succeeded after pushing the dough closer to the sandy consistency of a machine-extruded dough. After hydrating, this resulted in a very dry and hard dough that produced a pasta with a firm bite. Here’s the recipe that I use to make spaghetti quadri.

125 grams Giusto’s Extra Fancy Durum flour

125 grams Central Milling 00 Pizza flour

2 grams kosher salt

125 grams egg mixture (2 whole medium eggs plus 1 medium egg yolk. If the eggs/yolk weigh less than 125 grams, add water to make up difference; if the eggs/yolk weighs more, remove the overage.)

1. In a stand mixer fitted with its paddle attachment, mix together the flours and salt. In a glass, beat the egg mixture.

2. With the mixer running on low speed, slowly pour the egg mixture into the mixing bowl. Mix the dough for about 2 minutes. The dough should be crumbly, but still slightly damp and should hold together if tightly squeezed.

3. Remove the bowl from the mixer and add any dough on the paddle to the mixing bowl. Using your hand, bring the dough together into a large ball in the mixing bowl. Place the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and flatten the dough into a disc. If the dough crumbles a bit, don’t worry: tightly wrap the dough with the plastic wrap so that it holds its shape. As the dough rests, it will hydrate and come together. Leave the dough to rest at room temperature for 1 hour.

4. Attach the torchio to a work surface and insert the spaghetti quadri die. Unwrap the dough and lightly dust it with flour. Roll the dough into a thick cylinder and slide this into the torchio’s chamber. Insert the torchio’s piston into the machine’s chamber and turn the torchio’s handle—this will take some effort—until the pasta extrudes from the die. Cut the spaghetti quadri into approximately 12-inch long pieces, lightly dust with flour and place on a baking tray covered with semolina. Continue turning and cutting until the dough runs out. You will have enough pasta to serve 4 as a starter or 3 as a main course.

To cook the pasta, bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the fresh spaghetti quadri, stir the pasta and when the water returns to the boil, cook for approximately 2 to 3 minutes. Taste to determine if the pasta is ready. If so, drain and add the pasta to your ready sauce, mix the two together and cook the pasta and sauce for 1 to 2 minutes.

Don’t be surprised if nearly every regional Italian cookbook you consult suggests serving this pasta shape with a lamb and pepper ragù.  It’s a classic pairing worth trying. This pasta also tastes delicious with a simple light tomato sauce spiked with hot pepper.

Arnold Circus Biscuits

At year-end, I compile a list of my favorite cookbooks of the year. (Quick aside: 2013 looks to be an outstanding year for cookbooks. Stay tuned!) In 2012, Margot Henderson’s You’re All Invited topped my best-of list, hands down. Henderson filled her cookbook with recipes from her catering business, Arnold & Henderson; and from her London restaurant, Rochelle Canteen. These recipes—whether fancy(ish) or simple—feel honest: straightforward food to enjoy during any celebration, whether a Christmas Dinner or New Year Party or even a quiet Date Night at home. Although published in Britain, the recipes in You’re All Invited should pose no real problem for American households. It’s a wonderful and gracious cookbook and I highly recommend it.

Being a dessert and tea-loving lot, my family particularly likes the Pudding and Cakes section of You’re All Invited. In it Henderson shares a recipe for Arnold Circus Biscuits, a version of a cookie called an Anzac biscuit in her native New Zealand. Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corp and the original rolled oat cookie recipe dates back to World War I. The wartime biscuit needed to survive long, slow journeys without spoiling, thus it contained neither eggs nor butter. Instead, the biscuit relied on ingredients not apt to spoil (in this case, oats, flour, coconut and sugar). Modern versions of the recipe still omit eggs, but many, including Henderson’s recipe, now contain butter.  Why does Henderson call her version Arnold Circus Biscuits? Perhaps because she located her catering business and restaurant in an old Victorian school—its old bike shed, to be specific—in East London’s Arnold Circus. So I think of the biscuit as her house cookie. Henderson’s recipe makes about 36 biscuits.

100g porridge oats

75g desiccated coconut

100g plain flour

100g caster sugar

50g demerara sugar

100g butter

50g golden syrup

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/fan 160º/350ºF/gas 4, and line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

Put the oats, coconut, flour and both sugars into a large bowl and mix to combine.

Put the butter into a pan and add the golden syrup. Heat slowly and stir with a wooden spoon until the butter and syrup have melted together. Put the bicarbonate of soda into a cup, add 2 tablespoons of boiling water and mix to dissolve. Pour the mixture into the pan. Stir with a wooden spoon, then tip into the dry ingredients and mix to a crumbly paste.

Take teaspoonfuls of the mixture and roll them into balls. Place them on the cold baking trays, leaving a space of at least 3cm between them because they will spread as they cook. Bake for about 12 minutes, until they have spread out nicely and are a dark golden colour.

Cool on a rack, then store in an airtight tin.

Notes

For those of you that don’t speak British, some clarification might be in order. Porridge oats are rolled oats. Desiccated coconut means flaked or shredded coconut. Plain flour, as opposed to strong (high-protein) flour and soft (pastry) flour, is all-purpose flour. Caster sugar means super-fine sugar. Golden syrup, practically synonymous in England for Lyle’s Golden Syrup, is cane sugar syrup. Bicarbonate of soda translates to baking soda. Three centimeters equals just over an inch. And, of course, colour means color.

Although these cookies boast a long shelf-life, I can tell you that they don’t hang around too terribly long in my household: we can put away a batch in a couple of days. They are perfect with tea or as dessert (or even for elevenses…just ask my dear wife).

Pasta Dough No. 2

When using my torchio pasta press, I work with different dough recipes depending upon the type of pasta shape I am making. Because I am on a bit of a gramigna kick (here), my current dough-of-choice consists of 250 grams of type 00 and extra fancy durum flour mixed with 125 grams of eggs. This 2:1 flour-to-egg ratio produces a dry, hard dough suited to making gramigna in a torchio.

Just for fun, I used this same dough to make flat egg noodles in a conventional pasta machine with rollers. Although a 2:1 flour-to-egg ratio works exceptionally well in a torchio, this mixture felt a tad too hard for a home pasta machine. So, over the course of a week, I made multiple batches of dough, adding varying amounts of additional water to create a dough that was dry and hard—which results in a pasta with a firm texture—but not so hard that it would unduly stress my pasta machine.

With each batch I started with a mixture of type 00 flour from Central Milling (150 grams) and extra fancy durum flour from Giustos (100 grams). I sifted the flour into the bowl of a standing mixer and added a large pinch of salt. Next, I placed a glass on a scale, tared the scale and added 2 whole medium eggs and 1 medium egg yolk. On average this egg mixture weighed approximately 125 grams.

Over the course of five runs, I added as few as 5 grams and as many as 20 grams of additional water to the 125 gram egg mixture. I set the mixer, equipped with a paddle attachment, to low and drizzled in the egg mixture. Next, I mixed the dough until it came together (about 2 minutes depending upon the amount of liquid). Then, I removed the dough from the mixer, kneaded the dough by hand for a minute or two, and wrapped the dough in plastic and let it hydrate at room temperature for 30 minutes. Finally, I rolled the dough to setting 3 on my Imperia R220 Manual pasta machine.

By adding a relatively small amount of water to the eggs—as few as 5 grams—the dough became noticeably easier to roll in the R220. Of the dough variations, I preferred the driest batch (i.e., the dough with 5 grams of additional water), which produced a pasta with a great bite.