Who knew that making fresh pasta was so un-intimidating? On October 3, as part of a two-day food tour sponsored by South Coast Plaza, executive chef Steve Samson and sous chef Zach Pollack demonstrated how to produce pastas of various shapes and sizes. For the first time in my life, homemade pasta seemed achievable.
To produce the dough, Pollack demonstrated the “classic well method,” using his hands to mix egg yolks and whites with flour in a stainless steel bowl. According to Pollack, “Just yolks, it gets waxy.” While he began kneading the dough on a marble counter, Samson added, “As a rule it’s better to have too much wet ingredient, because you can always add more flour.”
Samson said it was a good idea to let the dough rest for 20-30 minutes to relax the gluten and allow for stretching.
Pollack formed a mass of dough, and then Samson ran the dough several times through an electric pasta machine to finish the kneading process and to smooth out the texture. The more times you run the sheets through the machine, the thinner they get. For stuffed pasta it should be thin enough to see through.
Let the noodles dry out a bit before cutting. When not working with the pasta, cover it with a towel so it doesn’t dry out. If it does dry out, spray with mist from a water bottle.
Samson differentiated between different types of Italian pasta. In Piemonte, locals prefer all-yolk flour-based pastas with vibrant yellow color. In southern Italy, you’re likely to find pasta made with semolina flour.
He and Pollack cut nearly a dozen shapes had each of us make a single garganelli from Emilia Romagna, a penne that’s ridged from being rolled with a tiny dowel on a gnocchi board. H.C. from LA & OC Foodventures went into a pasta rage at Pizzeria Ortica when rolling garganelli. I pity the gnocchi board.
Samson used a piping bag to fill ravioli and agnolotti with a mix of burrata, ricotta, olive oil, salt and pepper. “It’s good to put egg yolks in the filling,” he said. “It helps bind them.”
Samson generally wouldn’t fill a tortellini with cheese because it would be too mild in that small a dose. Traditionally, Italians use pork, rabbit or chicken with Parmesan, mortadella and nutmeg.
Tiny pillow-like agnolotti come from Piemonte.
Samson even had advice on saucing pastas. Ragus tend to go best with cut pastas. Butter and sage complements filled pasta. Tortellini can pair with broth or cream. According to Samson, “The sauce should never be anything other than a complement to the pasta.”
When cooking pasta, salting the water is very important.
Samson’s final piece of advice involved the aftermath: “If you freeze pasta for long, it tends to crack, especially the larger ones.”
After our lesson, we were each treated to three small piles of pasta:
Tortelloni are larger tortellini and can contain cheese because they hold more filling. Round ravioli is a tortelli. Zach packs his tortelli with pear and Pecorino, then dresses it with brown butter and crispy sage. It’s a traditional Tuscan recipe. Even though the pasta incorporated pear, it wasn’t too sweet.
Samson honored his mother’s homeland – Bologna – by producing Tagliatelle Bolognese, hand-cut spinach pasta tossed with ground meat sauce and lavished with shavings of Parimigiano Reggiano. Samson said he prefers to use frozen spinach since it’s already blanched.
Ravioli were filled with the aforementioned cheese mixture and tossed with tangy tomato sauce.
We were at Pizzeria Ortica, so each table received a margherita pizza topped with crushed San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil. The crust was blistered but pliable at the edges and sported a subtle sourdough tang.
Samson and Pollack made pasta making accessible and watching them work made the labor seem doable. Of course my pasta won’t be as attractive or smooth and will undoubtedly host a lot more “dead pasta space,” but I can see making several portions of fresh pasta on special occasions.
Note: FTC regulations dictate full disclosure. On the way out the door, Pizzeria Ortica gave us each a bag of beans, cooking wine and a T-shirt.
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