The Omnivorous Fish

“A watched pot never boils,” they say and, man, even when you’re not watching that shit takes forever.

When you start making fresh pasta regularly, you’ll soon have the process down to about 15 minutes. It takes seventeen hours to boil 6 quarts of water. That’s what it seems like, anyway. Lesson? When you make pasta often, put the water on to boil before you begin rolling.

All this talk about doughs and alternate flours has gotten my juices flowing. Did you know that showing people delicious foods increases their dopamine levels? Just by looking at it. Nora Volkow was on Fresh Air the other day. Imagine what my not-so-subtle imagination has done to my dopamine level.

Whole Wheat Pasta Dough

I once drove three and a half hours into Switzerland after being invited to dinner at an acquaintance from work’s house. He was a sweet, shy man who lived with his mother at the age of 36, whom I know for a fact made about sixty thousand dollars a year. I’m just saying. At any rate, he had invited me and few of the other Americans there for dinner on a Sunday.

The smell from the house was noticeable 60 feet out the front door. It was intense. We were ushered in, handed glasses of wine, and sent back outside, despite the nip in the air, to enjoy the view and the jars and crocks of giardiniera on the picnic table. Angelo, our host, came out in a surreally thick turtleneck to give us the geological highlights of the view. I snuck back inside to peek in on the kitchen.

It was an old, old house, with a fully functional fireplace that had a hook with a real kettle and something actually bubbling away in it. The wall with the fireplace was all stone, and I realized the door above the hearth was a bread oven, with guess-what baking in it. Olfactory layer number one. The kettle had stock in it, bones protruding from the surface here and there. There was a cheesecloth bag in it, too. Riso, Angelina explained, rice. I looked at it quizzically, still amazed by the hearth. “Oh,” she said, looking slightly sad, “ne parle pas de francais” in the worst French accent I’d heard since high school. I laughed, and told her, in Italian, that I understood her perfectly well, but I was left speechless by her super wicked bread oven.

I was officially over her shoulder for the rest of the meal. She was working at a big wooden table, covered with what looked like a sheet of dark canvas. It seemed she was making canvas ravioli. “Farina integrale?” -whole wheat- I asked, genuinely clueless as to what she was making. “No, no,” she said, “la pasta e fatto di segale.” Segale? What the hell is that? “Qual’e, singora?” “Segale,” she said, puzzled, “e segale.” Asking Angelo, who was not pleased that I was hanging out with his mother, only turned up more questions, since he didn’t know what segale was in English, and I didn’t know what it was in Italian, or French. Finally, we had some bread, and it all became clear.

Whole Wheat Pappardelle

“Holy shit,” I said, ever the ambassador, “This is the best rye bread I ever had!” Angelina lit up, “Segale!” And we had our answer.

Rye pasta ravioli stuffed with meat and nettles and sauced with cabbage. I’m a white kid from the suburbs; talk about a culture shock.

I didn’t have any rye flour lying around last night, but I had whole wheat, so I made pappardelle, one inch wide noodles, with farina integrale. They won’t roll as thin as regular pasta, none of those types of grains will, so get over it. They’re not as elastic, either, since they don’t have as much gluten. It’s ok, you’ll live, just handle the dough carefully. Besides, these are handmade, it’s not like they’re out of a box; they’re supposed to be snowflakes. I also had some tomato sauce I had made for the gnocchi, so I was set to go.

I reduced some half and half with a little butter and a splash of brandy, then, when it was getting close to being able to coat a spoon, I dropped the pasta in the (finally) boiling water, added the tomato sauce and some pasta water to the sauce.

Before you ask, this is not Salsa Aurora, or Dawn Sauce. There is a famous Italian pink sauce so named, but it’s made out of mayonnaise and served with fish. Among Italians, something like this is usually called ‘salsa rosa.’

I took the just barely undercooked noodles out of the water, and dropped them straight into the sauce: no colander. A big skimmer, a fork or some tongs and a little chutzpah is all you need. Since I rolled the pasta by hand, with a wooden dowel on a wooden board, the sauce adhered to the pasta quite well. The sauce was a little “tight,” or thick, though, so I splashed a little of that magic pasta water into the sauce, and- skiddoo- onto plates, grated cheese and done.

I’ve been talking about pasta a lot lately, because I’ve been making pasta a lot lately. Why? I don’t know, but I’m not complaining.

Listening: Nickel Creek “When You Come Back Down” Nickel Creek
T-minus 9 days to Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. I am stoked.