Anticiplate

This has been a long, long week of cooking. Lots of newness, and experiments, and some tride and trues. Right now, it is 3:45 in the afternoon on Monday, and I am still lying in bed. At 10:45 last night, I almost collapsed on top of my beige down comforter, refusing to brush my teeth, and shower away ten hours of cooking at Delancey, but I convinced myself not to be lazy. I slept for a full twelve hours, and have been watching trashy television, eating Amy’s frozen burritos and monster cookies from my amazing sister in law, while snuggling with the dog and playing around on Twitter.

My prediction is that I will be doing this exact same thing until tomorrow morning, leaving the responsibility of laundry and unloading the dishwasher until the sun rises again. Yes. It has been a long week.

Last week I braised octopus for a friend for lunch, dry brined and confited some duck for a private dinner, butchered a New York Strip for a carpaccio dish for Delancey, broke down a pig’s head for a tourchon at How To Cook A Wolf, and made this chestnut pasta. That was all in addition to the fifty-five hours that I clocked in last week. Reminder to myself: I. Love. Cooking.

Those tasks were all fine and dandy. But, not everything went so well. At Delancey on Thursday, I spilled four quarts of “Jersey Dressing” on the ground. It slipped from my hands as I was trying to refill a squeeze bottle during service. As the plastic quart container bounced on the floor, splashing dressing on the hostess’ leg, the giant silver meat slicer, and covering the small walkway to the back kitchen, I just stared at the floor, not even reacting. Blue prep towels covered the walkway, as people just stepped on them to continue there jobs. The clean up was going to have to wait. Then, in a lull, an entire box of kosher salt was poured on top of the ground to absorb the oily mess. We still continued what we were doing.

That night, I swept the oily salt, realizing that people don’t even bat an eye in the restaurant world at mistakes. Broken wine glasses, messed up orders for customers, bathroom problems during service, spilled Jersey dressing. It is all just par for the course.

And, I almost messed up the famous Delancey Chocolate Chip cookies. As you know, I am a self-proclaimed horrible baker. But, this, might have actually put me over the edge to never even attempting to bake again. After twenty minutes of the twenty seven cookies baking in the oven, the timer went off an they were not even browned. “Huh”, I thought, as I set the timer for another five minutes, hoping that it was maybe just this batch. I continued to chop shallots.

Finally, after another ten minutes in the oven, I asked my boss his opinion as to why the darn cookies weren’t getting browned. He looked right at the oven temperature and turned it from 275 to 350. Wow. Did I really set the oven temperature to 275? Did it get knocked or did I just not look when I was setting the timer? Regardless, major fail. Luckily, (I don’t know why), the cookies actually turned out well. Kind of melty on the inside, with a crispy outer layer because of the rapid change in temperature. I am glad I didn’t have to tragically throw all of them out. That would really have put me over the edge.

I also worked at How To Cook A Wolf on Friday and Saturday nights, which I love. But, people just kept coming, and coming. The tickets just kept flowing out of the printer. It was almost as if it was never going to stop. At one point, I actually looked at the time on one of my tickets (major no no) and it said 7:30. 7:30! I thought it was at least 9:00. Semi-discouraging when they serve food there until midnight. But: I. Love. Cooking.

At least this pasta worked out, sort of. It was starting to doubt myself, after I ran around the whole city looking for chestnut flour, but I finally found it at DeLaurenti’s (thanks Lorna!). The dough is kind of sticky, but comes together quite quickly with sort of a brown hue from the chestnut flour. I paired it with sauteed wild mushrooms in butter, thyme, a little white wine, and a crap-load of cheese. The only problem, which I resolved when writing the recipe for you, was that when I went to put the chestnut pasta out of their “nests” they resisted. Yes. The noodles were all sticking together, almost as if they knew they were about to get blanched it a giant pot boiling, salty tasting water. I started to panic, but I allowed patience to take over as I peeled each noodle individually from the other. Remembering: I. Love. Cooking.

It has been a long, long week.

Serves 4

*Adapted from Giorgio Locatelli

Prep time: 20 minutes, plus 1 hour of resting

Cook time: 3-5 minutes depending on thinness of dough

2 3/4 c. doppio zero flour (or AP if you can’t find it)

3/4 c. chestnut flour

1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

15 egg yolks

pinch of salt

Sieve the two flours together in a bowl to mix them thoroughly. Dump the mound onto a clean countertop. Make a well in the middle with the back of your measuring cup, leaving a 1-inch border around the outside. Pour the oil, the egg yolks, and the salt in the middle of the well. Using the same method as this recipe, use your pointer finger in a circular motion to incorporate the dough. With a bench scraper, pull in a bit more of the dough from the outside of the well so that the flour incorporates into the eggs slowly. Once the egg yolk mixture starts to pull away from the surface, and your pointer finger can no longer mix the dough, start to pull the dough together with both of your hands, kneading the dough to create a ball.

Bring the mixture into a ball, and then push forward with the heal of your hands. This is the basic method of kneading pasta dough. Do this, over and over again, for about five minutes. This dough is much more tender than this dough, so it will incorporate faster, but also be stickier. You can always incorporate more flour to make the dough less sticky.

Divide the dough into two balls, and let rest, covered in plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for one hour or up to three days.

To roll the dough, flatten the ball into a disk. Start on the largest setting on your pasta roller, feed the dough through the machine.You should repeat this on the largest setting about three times.

Then, slowly start to thin out the dough by cranking the setting smaller and smaller until you start to see through the dough but it does not break or look wavy. The dough should have an even texture throughout. Because this dough is softer, and stickier, you should not make it too thin. Dust the sheet with flour.

Let the dark sheet rest under a damp towel as you change your attachment. Pull the pasta sheet through whatever shape makes you happy. I used the tagliatelle setting.

After you are done pulling the dough through the extruder, lay the dough, separated on a cooling rack so that it dries out individually, for about 10 minutes. Dust the noodles in flour, and store them in a “nest” until ready to use. They will keep for up to 12 hours.