When I told the children about this month's Daring Cook's challenge, they rejoiced...
They love their noodles...
This month, Steph from StephFood challenged us to come up with some simple noodles dish, out of our own food culture, making noodles from scratch. She has attached some recipes of different types of noodles here.
Our family, most of the hand made noodles are fettuccini or linguini, so this is the take one of this wonderful challenge:
Fettuccini with Giant Meat Balls
The Meat Balls - Rissoles
Beef mince
Sausage mince
onion - minced
carrot - grated
white bread crumbs
salt & pepper
mixed dry herbs
egg
Ground white pepper
Mix the ingredients and rolled it in bread crumbs, this is the same simple recipe for rissoles and we use it as big meat balls with passata,, parsley, bocconcini.
Now for the fettucini.
That's the simple part as we make them at least once a month - I wish we had more time to make more of them.
300g 00 flour or plain flour mixed with 1/3 semolina
3 large eggs
a pinch of salt
bit of extra virgin olive oil.
Make a well with the flour and salt and crack in the eggs.
Mix and form the dough, knead, wrap in cling film and rest the dough in the fridge for about an hour.
Use our trust worthy pasta maker...
dust with some plain four and I usually hang them up before cooking in slightly salted boiling water.
Drain in colander, and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil.
Serve with the giant meat balls.
Grate some parmesan cheese - happy children!
I've made more noodles during the challenge month, and will post later.
My family loves pasta. No doubt. Especially the children.
However, they always love their bolognese sauce.
So this time, I made a simple linguini marinara, with vegetables, herbs and white wine as sauce.
The ingredients used:
1 kg mixed fish fillets, prawn, shell fish - seafood marinara mix.
6 ripe tomatoes
Handful of button mushrooms
1 cup of white wine
plenty of olive oil
Fresh basil, mint and parsley from the garden
crushed garlic
juice of 1 lemon
1 sliced red onion
Cracked black pepper and salt
Saute and garlic and onion in heated oil. Meanwhile, cook the linguini in boiling water with a bit of salt.
Add in the tomato and mushrooms, saute till half cooked.
Add in the seafood mixture and , let it cooked till half cooked and add in white wine.
Add the shopped fresh herbs, lemon juice and pepper and salt, mix well.
Drain cooked al dente linguini in colander add to the marinara mix, stir through and take pan off heat, drizzle on more extra virgin olive oil, serve with shaved parmasan and more fresh parsley.
It's nice to be able to stew osso bucco for a long long time, however it can be done within a couple of hours if time is short, and there's no need for pressure cooker.
We felt like some osso bucco and just did that one afternoon after I finish work, for dinner. I do finish early, but it's still around 4:00pm when I get home.
We cooked 2 pieces of Osso Bucco. I didn't make gremolata this time.
Just saute some onions and garlic, brown both sides of osso bucco, deglaze with white wine, add chopped parsley and passata, salt and pepper, simmer in low heat for as long as I can, in my case, around 1.5 to 2 hours.
Serve with shell pasta and shredded parmesan.
I haven't made pasta for a while, and thought I'd better make some for the big salmon portions we bought from the newly openned Woolies in Richmond. They are really fresh and I'd like to do some creamy sauce pasta.
Partially reminded by last Friday night's Master Class, of the Kiddie Masterchef show.
Pappardelles are great with ragus, but I also like the rustic taste of it for the creamy salmon.
This is really easy to make, the portions here will make 2 mains or 4 entrées. Children friendly.
2 x 250g skin less bone less fresh Atlantic salmon portions
200ml cream
olive oil
10-12 capers
1.5 cup fish stock
1 tbsp plain flour
1 knob of butter
handful of fresh herbs, parsley, oregano, mint.
Olive oil.
Cracked black pepper
Ground white pepper
1 tbsp white wine
Salt to season
dash of Lemon juice
1 tbsp of dijon mustard.
For the dough:
2 large eggs, 59g
200g pasta flour
dash of olive oil.
My children like the whole egg pasta, so I haven't been playing with adding other vegies or herbs into the dough. Simple combine the ingredients, form the dough, set for rest for an hour or so wrapped up, and pass through the trust worthy pasta maker. The 10 year old boy was a bit grumpy at the time, so he got offerred to do the pasta machine. (certainly turned his mood around and he was very proud of himself, he always think he is a bit of a cook, well, that's what he thinks.) For Pappardelles, I didn't make the sheets really thin, like I'd normally do with linguini, so the thickness I decided was 2 on the dial. And we fold up the sheets after patted it with flour, and cut them into 1.5cms wide stripes, left them hanging up...
And then we turned to the salmon portions. It's simple. Just cracked pepper and sea salt flakes, and pan fried gently in olive oil. I added a dash of lemon juice before taking the salmon out for resting.
I used the same pan, added the knob of butter, added the flour to make the roux, and then just used the cream and fish stock for a simple white sauce. Added white pepper, finely diced capers and white wine and made sure the sauce is the consistancy I wanted.
Mean while, roughly break the salmon up in chunks and return them to the white sauce, only for less than 1 minute maybe? Just to coat them with white sauce.
Ah, I did made the pot of salted water to boil my pasta at the mean time as well... the fresh pasta didn't take too long to cook normally and we usually just drain the pasta and add more olive oil before plating.
I didn't use the fresh herbs on the children's plates (we didn't want to have big portions at dinner time as we wanted to lose some weight before summer comes - got one month to go! And we decided entrée size serves are enough for dinners these days) but did manage to load our plates up with herbs from the garden (I'm very glad that they are doing fine, however for some weird reason, I can't seem to find basil this year so basil has been missing from my garden).
I was very happy to see the children finishing their plates, as normally Luke won't tough creamy sauce pasta - guess he made them, he had to show every one he did a great job!
Tuesday evenings are usually a rush for us, the boys will go for their music lessons, that's hubby's guitar and the boy's piano lessons. So everything have to be quick and pasta is actually the most common dish on Tuesday nights.
Tonight, I made a simeple pasta bake, with enough vegetables and my favourite Ricotta cheese and Mozzarella cheese...
Double Cheese Chorizos Pasta Bake
2 Raw Chorizos sausages
5 Sprigs of parsley
1 Green Capsicum
1 zucchini
2 medium ripe tomatos
250g Ricotta cheese
100g Mozzarella cheese
Salt and Ground white pepper to taste
1/3 cup olive oil & 1.5 tbsp extra
1 small onion
300g big shell pasta
Water to boil pasta
Extra salt
Method
In a big pot, boil pasta as per instruction of the packet, add bit of salt to taste to water, simmer till it’s al dente.
At the mean time, slice chorizos, onion, capsicum and zucchini and tomatoes.
Finely chop parsley (I usually use continental parsley)
Drain pasta in colander and put it back into the pot, add 1/3 cup olive oil and stir through.
In a non stick frying pan, add the extra 1.5 tbsp olive oil, gently sauté the onion and capsicum in medium heat and add chorizos, sauté till almost cooked.
Add these to the pasta, and add tomatoes, stir through ricotta cheese and salt and pepper, mix well.
Put in ceramic baking dish and top with shredded mozzarella cheese.
Bake in 190C oven for 25-30 minutes.
This is a single serve baking dish actually, but I still prefer it in the plate:
