Tag Archives: Mortar and Pestle

Mandilli de Saea al Pesto with Peas

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I started out my last post saying that summertime “is a season to avoid being booked and busy as much as possible, to allow time to be free to savor summer’s simple pleasures.”  A few nights ago, I came home intent on making Mandilli de Saea al Pesto with Fresh Garden Peas –this supper is one of the reasons I avoid being booked and busy.  I have been waiting since January to roll out Silk Handkerchiefs or Mandilli de Saea and, cook them gently, and  coat them with a stunning, bright green, fragrant pesto made with basil from our garden.

I began by shelling a pound of farmer’s market peas.  Just-cooked, freshly-shelled peas rounded out our simple supper perfectly. 

I have rolled out fresh pasta in various formats, and made pesto a time or two, but I don’t claim to be an expert on either, though my technique has certainly gotten better over time.  I first learned to make fresh pasta at a cooking class I took at the Chopping Block Cooking School located in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago that my sweetheart gave me as a Christmas present a few years ago.  I will shamelessly admit that everything I have learned since I can attribute to watching cooking shows on T.V.  I usually follow Lidia Bastianich’s recipe for fresh pasta which is simple, using a food processor, readily available all-purpose flour and a little olive oil which makes a silky dough.  I came home from work and immediately got to work using our handy-dandy food processor to mix up a half-recipe of pasta dough—two people don’t need 1½ pounds of pasta sitting around.  Thank you Lidia for making your dough in the food processor.

Lidia’s  Pasta Dough – Yield 1½ pounds of dough

3 cups all-purpose flour
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
7 tablespoons very cold water, plus more as needed

Process:

Measure the flour into the food processor, and give it a quick buzz to distribute air throughout.  Crack eggs and measure liquid into a separate bowl.  Start the processor on high, and stream the liquid ingredients into the processor.  Once combined, the dough should form a ball at the end of the processor’s blade.  If it is crumbly, add cold water one tablespoon at a time until a ball forms.  If the dough is sticky, knead in a small amount of flour until the pasta is smooth.  Form the dough into a disk, wrap in saran wrap or a clean towel and let rest for 30 minutes.  After resting the dough, cut the disk into 8 equal pieces (or 4 if you are making a ½ recipe).  Begin by rolling the dough through the largest setting of a pasta machine, fold it once, and then roll through the largest setting again.  Roll the dough through each successively smaller setting once, until the noodles reach the desired thickness, which for Mandilli de Saea, should be thin enough to be semi-transparent.  I rolled my pasta through settings 1-6 using the flat pasta rolling attachment on my Kitchenaid Mixer, then used a rotary pasta cutter to slice the long sheets of pasta into squares of roughly the same size.  Perfection isn’t necessary.  One of the beauties of homemade pasta is its humble nature.  Italian Grandmas aren’t measuring each square with a ruler.

I placed a clean, lightly floured dish towel on top of a rimmed baking sheet, and laid the handkerchiefs on it, side by side.  Once one towel was filled, I gently layered another on top of it, filled it with squares of pasta, and continued to layer pasta between towels, one on top of the next until all of the pasta was rolled.  I covered the top layer with an additional towel to keep the pasta from drying out too fast.

Paolo Laboa’s Genovese Pesto

15-20 Leaves of Genovese Basil, Soaked in cold water to reduce Chlorophyll
2 Cloves of Garlic, peeled
A small handful of Pine Nuts
Approximately ½ Cup of Grated Parmesan Cheese
Ligurian Olive Oil, or Light Olive Oil
Pinch of Sea Salt

I follow Chef Paolo Laboa’s Chow Network tutorial on creating the perfect pesto as closely as possible.  In the past this has involved attempting to grind and mash the ingredients together by hand into a creamy, perfectly-emulsified green paste using my mortar and pestle.  This week, there was an unfortunate freak accident in our kitchen, which involved an old kitchen drawer that was mounted to the wall and used for years as a shelf falling (or leaping?) to the floor.  Apparently, one of the screw-in hangers was stripped.  When the shelf came down it took with it its contents, about half of which were smashed to smithereens.  My precious Mortar and Pestle, Butter Bell butter crock, the stopper to my vintage vinegar bottle and a tiny lidded pot de creme vessel all met their demise along with a full bottle of balsamic glaze.  The incident left kitchen cupboards and floor and the inside of an open drawer splattered with sticky, syrupy balsamic glaze which affixed the jagged remnants of the broken crockery firmly to the tile floor.  It will take several more rounds with a bucket and sponge to get every glued-down shard out of the grout between the floor tiles.  Sadly, everything but the balsamic glaze was a Christmas or anniversary gift.  Though I am a little heavy-hearted having several gifts broken to bits, these things can be replaced.  In the meantime, it gives me a good excuse to use the food processor to make pesto which isn’t Paolo Laboa’s way, but it is much easier.  

Grate approximately ½ cup of Parmesan Cheese into the bowl of the food processor.

Add a handful of pine nuts, a sprinkle of sea salt, and two peeled cloves of garlic and pulse ingredients together to form a paste.

Add 15-20 leaves of Genovese Basil which have been soaked in cold water to reduce the chlorophyl.  Chlorophyl gives plants their verdant hue, and it improves the basil flavor to have it taste a little less “green.”  Add a small amount of olive oil, and pulse, stopping to scrape down the sides of the food processor.  When the ingredients have become a thick paste, stream in additional oil while running the processor until the pesto has a smooth texture.

Cook the pasta handkerchiefs in a large pot of boiling, lightly-salted water for 1½- 3 minutes, until al dente.  I cooked the peas in a separate saucepan of boiling water and drained them after 1½ minutes.  In a large bowl, mix the pesto with a small ladle-full of hot pasta-cooking water to melt the parmesan cheese, then added the pasta and peas to the bowl.  Gently stir the hot sheets of pasta and peas through the pesto to coat each surface with warmed, melting sauce.

We sat down immediately to eat at the table on our patio that faces the garden.  All of the senses are engaged in the preparation and enjoyment of this meal.  The process is completely justified by the result.  There is no way to duplicate the fragrance, colour, texture or flavor on this plate using frozen peas, jarred pesto, or pasta from a box.  We enjoyed the meal the only way it should be made– totally from scratch, in season and eaten al fresco.  A fresh plate of Mandilli de Saea al Pesto, piled high with sweet, fresh peas is a wonderful summer-only dish.

A Lesson in Pesto

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If it hasn’t already become extremely obvious, pasta is one of my all-time favorite foods.  There are so many variations, from basic buttered noodles to whatever-you-have-in-the-fridge, to traditional recipes: stroganoff, Bolognese, or pasta all’Amatriciana.  I’m usually a “concept cook” who has something in mind [e.g. pasta with veggies] and the actual ingredients I use depend on what I’m in the mood for or what needs to be used up.  I haven’t been one to follow many recipes.  I enjoy the freedom of my slapdash approach to cookery, but I have tasted enough really good food in my years to know that recipes, carefully chosen ingredients, timeless techniques and even a little precision are equally as necessary in the kitchen as passion and creativity.  It also pays to take a few tips from the experts.  I have long loved food blogs, food magazines, food television, cookbooks and hanging out in other people’s kitchens.  Reading about cooking, talking about it and observing other cooks in action are my source of inspiration.  These are as much my hobbies as cooking and writing about food.   I became aware of the noticeable difference that good technique and ingredients yield in restaurant meals, but the breakthrough did not occur at home until I learned about the perfect pesto.

It was just another Wednesday night.  I found myself watching short programs on the Chow network on our Roku on cooking and food.  There was an episode on soup dumplings,* and on the perfect beer,** and then a segment on the perfect pesto aired and changed my approach to pesto forever.

Previously, I have only had a modest appreciation of pesto.  The first pesto pasta I ate was a lunch back in my teenage years at the now-shuttered Grandma’s Restaurant in Fargo, North Dakota.  It was so heavily garlic-y that I was afraid of both pesto and garlic for almost a decade.  I still shudder to think about how much raw garlic I consumed before realizing it would be with me for days.  More recently, I have tasted a pretty good silk handkerchief in a mild, dark green pesto at Bar La Grassa.  Having grown basil in our garden, I’ve also made basil and parsley pestos at home that have been fine on toasted sandwiches and roasted vegetables.  None of these looked anything like the marvelous green pesto I saw that evening on the Chow network.

According to the food writer, Marcia Gagliardi who appeared in the segment, perfect pesto can be had in San Francisco at a restaurant called Farina, on a pasta dish called mandilli al pesto.  I do believe Marcia is right.  When you read about Farina, you get a sense that they are better at what they do than everyone else.  The chefs of Farina make known their belief that only Italians can cook the true foods of their region.  I am not going to dispute that or attempt to prove them wrong.  But I am going to try to learn as much as I can from them about making pesto.  In the segment I watched, Chef Paolo Laboa of Farina explains the process of making pesto while shifting naturally from English and Italian, translating himself, and pausing to emphasize the importance of each detail of his approach.  What becomes immediately clear even through the television is the fact that his pesto is different.  It is bright green and creamy and is almost a perfectly emulsified, glistening paste.  When Chef Paolo adds the pesto to the pasta, it melts, enveloping the thin sheets in a perfect, translucent, green coating.  I’m guessing it is a meal that dreams are made of.  Just looking at it makes you want to be in the Mission District for supper tonight.  Or at our house…

Back to a winter day in Minnesota…  I may never duplicate Chef Laboa’s pesto, but in listening to him, I learned a few things about how to make a better pesto.  First, for a pesto worthy of freshly rolled pasta, you have to ditch the food processor and use a mortar and pestle.  Fortunately for me, I just received one for Christmas from Bjorn.  The one he selected for me is a nice small size that I can comfortably manage to hold.  It is made of non-porous porcelain and a smooth wooden handle and a red exterior that I am happy to store on the open shelves in our kitchen.

I learned from Chef Paolo that the origin of ingredients matters a lot.  Basil pesto universally contains basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese and salt.  Sure, you can make pesto out of these ingredients produced anywhere, but to begin to approximate Paolo Laboa’s pesto, you need basil that is similar to that grown in Genoa, Olive Oil from Liguria, Pine Nuts from Pisa, and carefully-selected Parmesan.  And you need time.  Lots of time.  After watching the segment and trying to make it myself a few times I realized the making of Paolo’s pesto takes longer than it appears to take on TV.

I did the best I could gathering ingredients.  It is winter, and the basil I found at the store wasn’t the best.  I do believe that the Genovese basil from our garden will be an improvement on the basil available at the supermarket in a clamshell package in January.  I didn’t spring for $18 Italian Pine Nuts but got some from Spain instead.  I tried a few of Chef Laboa’s tips.  Since Ligurian olive oil is not available to me I used light olive oil instead of extra virgin which is too strong and kills the taste of the basil.  I soaked the basil leaves in water because, I learned if you don’t soak the basil there is too much chlorophyll in the leaves.  I crushed the pine nuts with garlic and coarse salt and added 15 basil leaves.  I put my heart into the process of grinding all of the ingredients together and then mixing in the oil.  When the pesto was ready, I added a little pasta water to the pesto to melt the cheese before tossing hand-rolled handkerchiefs of pasta in the pesto.  The end result of my effort did not yield the solid bright-green cream produced by Chef Laboa.  Not even close.  Even so, we thought the result was delicious and immeasurably better than the oily, basil-heavy, oxidized, chunky sludge that I’ve made in the food processor.  If pesto is worth making, it is worth making well.  Will I spend 45 minutes with the mortar and pestle to make pesto every week?  Certainly not.  It is a time-consuming process and a rich dish you can’t eat every week.  Come summer though, when the basil is bursting forth I will make pesto again.  I might not achieve “perfect” pesto, but delicious will be good enough.

*The segment about soup dumplings made me want soup dumplings which are little pouches made of dough that are stuffed with meat and fatty broth that liquefy upon cooking.  Are there vegetarian soup dumplings out there?  I want to try them!

**The writer of the beer segment claimed Supplication Ale by Russian River Brewing Company to be the best beer in the world.  I’m sure I’d like it, but that I’d disagree about it being the best.