Aspiring pasta granny
Buckwheat pasta with a mushroom-star anise sauce.
A few months ago I had dinner with my friend Jason at Eataly, and ordered freshly made pasta. I told him, “ooh, I want to try making pasta from scratch!”
Shortly after, he sent me a pasta roller. A special shout-out to Jason, who for over two decades (!) has encouraged my creative endeavors — and just me in general!
I also have a new favorite IG account: Pasta Grannies, which shows “Italian Grannies who make delicious, handmade pasta!” I’m inspired to embrace my inner pasta granny.
It's so much fun using the pasta roller — it's soothing and satisfying, and you have no choice but to slow down your movements and thoughts. The first dish I made was a lasagna and it was amazing! The second dish I made is featured below: buckwheat pasta with a mushroom-sherry-star anise sauce.
Buckwheat is a fine way to widen the wheel of starches that keep you going. It’s as nutritious as it is environmentally sustainable: rapid-growing, non-fussy, heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant. It’s often used as a cover crop to suppress weeds and protect soil. And it’s versatile too — as a grain, a flour or a tea!
This newsletter is the culmination of weeks (on-and off) of noodle-making, ingredient-shopping, tripod setting up, putting on makeup just for myself and the camera. It’s a lot of work! But it’s a true joy to create something new and share it with people. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Dough:
Ingredients: Buckwheat flour, all-purpose flour, eggs, salt
Thank you to Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian for this recipe.
Combine 1 and 1/2 cups buckwheat flour, half cup all-purpose flour and pinch of salt. Create a hole in the flour mound and slowly mix in three eggs. Knead with lots of energy.
Noodles:
Pasta is a great way to showcase diverse, climate-smart grains because everyone loves pasta.
Here’s my pasta granny video (it’s sped up a bit):
End result — the noodles resist your bite a bit more than “regular” pasta would. Is this bad or good?
It depends on your perspective. I do feel like I now have more concrete, intimate understanding of why wheat commercialization spread like wildfire: it’s much easier to process than other grains. My cooking adventures leave me in admiration for wheat’s remarkable pliability and versatility.
But also, it’s the difficulty in processing that makes buckwheat and other “ancient” or “traditional” grains appealing. Their flavors are difficult to eliminate, as is their nutrition. The pasta below is nutritious and filling — the protein, fiber and nutrients haven’t been processed out (or at least, much less so than in all-purpose flour).
Also, they’re sexy. Look at them! They’re like squid ink pasta, except without the squid ink.
Or they’re like soba. The first time I made these, I used the thin setting and I had a fun eureka moment: “Oh, I just made soba!” So, I’m looking forward to making lots of spicy noodle soups this winter.
Sherry-mushroom sauce with star anise:
I'm proud of this elegant sauce because I stepped out of my comfort zone (onions, garlic, and for Western foods - cheese) and employed some new-to-me ingredients.
Ingredients:
For broth: dried mushrooms, onions, bay leaf
For sauce: Mushrooms of any kind (I used baby bellas and oyster), buckwheat flour, butter (or oil), star anise
Steps:
To make broth, add handful of dried mushrooms, half an onion (great way to use onion scraps!) and a bay leaf or two to a large pot of water. Let boil, then simmer for at least 30 minutes.
Put 1 large pat of butter or 1 tbsp oil in saucepan along with one or two star anise and melt.
Mix in 1 tbsp buckwheat flour while butter melts to create a roux, and thin with a little broth.
Add about 1 cup mushrooms, a drizzle of olive oil, reduce hit and simmer. Add splash of sherry.
Stir frequently and add broth as mushroom mixture dries, for about 30-45 minutes.
End result: It was quite lovely. Much more understated (read: non-ethnic) than I would usually cook. It was interesting to build a recipe around just a few flavors: woodsy mushrooms and licorice-y star anise, rounded out by smoky, caramel-y sherry.
Next up: a baked good/sweet using star anise and/or sherry!
Li’l nubs:
You know, it’s a big time of the year for the world. A few months ago a French guy told me, “yeah people in France are pissing their pants about this election.” I was all, “ummm yeah…they and me both, brother.” To any non-Americans reading this — we know the stakes are high, and we’re scared too. I try to end this newsletter with a joyful note, but I’m too stressed out right now.
The pasta-making was a wonderful distraction though, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it!
I bet you have a friend who loves food and cares about climate change. If you enjoyed this post, will you share it with them?
Oh your buckwheat pasta looks wonderful, we can't wait to try, thanks! Actually we only recently started to make our own pasta, so we don't have a pasta roller, but we can try other shapes.
And we luvvv Pasta Grannies! They have some great pane vids too - we just watched one for Sardinian pane carasau, made us think of the bhatura we had as kids, though that's fried, not baked.