Fresh Pasta with Leaves and Flowers

I have been making pasta with herbs for years now, a good party trick, easy and effective. But I never had much luck with flowers, usually I got strips of colour and little more... until now. I am not sure if this is the reason but... I made a little change to my pasta dough. Usually I make fresh pasta with flour and eggs, the ratio being 100 g of flour to one free range egg. This time for 300 g of flour and 3 eggs I also added 1 tbsp of olive oil. At first I did this to make my job easier: I have little cold hands, not really suitable for pasta making. I could never do what my Grandmother did: work with a huge mass of 1 kg, all by hand and with the rolling pin. But she was a real Emiliana (from Emilia Romagna), with strong harms, and she started to make pasta at a very young age.

I picked some herbs and flowers from my garden. I rolled the pasta with a manual pasta machine down to the lower setting (very thin). Then I placed some leaves (and flowers) on the pasta (if it gets dry just brush the spot with a little water), folded some more pasta over and sprinkled with a little flour.

I set the pasta machine back to the second lower setting a put the pasta through the rollers again.

I think that you could easily stop here and cut your pasta, but I like fresh pasta to be very very thin, so I passed the pasta once more through the roller on the last setting. The pasta didn't break, and the leaves and petals flatten beautifully. I really like the patterns, especially the one the chives made.

Then I cut the pasta out with a pasty cutter: Here is the Italian parsley

Borage Flowers

Vietnamese mint

Nasturtiums

Oregano (Fresh)

Rose (red)

Basil

Chives

Calendula

Do not use rosemary or even sage, they are too thick and will break the pasta.

I cooked the pasta in salted boiling water. It only takes a couple of minutes because it is so thin, and the colours stayed!!! Usually I dress fresh pasta with butter, sage and parmesan cheese, but I didn't add sage this time because I wanted to taste the herbs and flowers in the pasta. Also I have to say that butter in NZ is really tasty, yellow and creamy (because cows eat green grass all year round).

The Vietnamese mint has a strong but super pleasant and fresh taste. Parsley and chives also had a lot of taste, basil and oregano less. Among the flowers the winner was the rose, I could really taste it. I am quite happy with the result, an easy but effective and delicate dish which could do well for important occasions.

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book Sweet As... where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content ...

Crema Bruciata, or Crème brûlée, with nectarines, plums and cherries

The original recipes comes from my book Sweet As... , my own recipe which doesn't require steam baking in the oven and includes nectarine slices. Plum slices and cherries were also added here, and the result was delicious! In Italy we also call this crema bruciata , but crème brûlée is most commonly used now as it sounds sophisticated :-). To make the crème you will need one egg yolk for each 100ml of cream and 1 tbsp of sugar, for this recipes I used 5 egg yolks (thus 500ml cream and 5 tbsp of sugar) and I filled 8 ramekins, plus I had a little left to fill three miniature ones. Of course if you don't put any fruit on the bottom you will need more crème. It is up to you how much fruit you put in, generally I just line the bottom of the ramekins with 4-5 think slices, this time I think I overdid it (thus the leftover crème) sicne stone fruit season is not long in NZ, and I wanted to use more fruit than crème! Don't use watery fruit and remo...

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