It's early morning on a Monday here, and we are snowed in. Flakes are still falling fast and heavy, and from the looks of it through my window we've gotten at least 9 inches of it since yesterday afternoon. I worked on Saturday night, beat my way through a horrendously understaffed and chaotic shift, and fretted about the weather all night long. An extra set of clothes was packed in my car, in case the roads were too dangerous for me to get home. Luckily the storm parked itself over DC for awhile, delaying its arrival to our area by several hours.
I left the hospital by 7:45am, and as I drove I saw a large flock of geese flying in a dark V in the grey sky... headed northward. I pulled over, rolled down my window, and listened to them honk as they flew overhead. Joni Mitchell sang in my head, "...the warriors of winter give a cold triumphant shout... as all that stays is dying, and all that lives is getting out... see the geese in chevron flight, racing and flapping on before the snow... they've got the urge for going, they've got the wings to go." I shivered, turned up the heat and continued on my way. I was home, essential groceries (milk, onions, salad greens) and super fancy coffee drinks from Starbucks (rare treat!) in hand, before the first flurry fell.
Our plans for this Sunday had been to visit Honeybunch's family, but the storm made that journey unwise for us, and we unfortunately had to reschedule. Instead, Honeybunch and I decided to spend an evening trying out my Christmas present. He'd gotten me an Omega juicer, which happens to be an extremely impressive piece of machinery that can not only juice fruits and veggies, but can make nut butters and pasta, grind grains and coffee beans, and act as a food processor. I mashed together some semolina, whole wheat flour, eggs, and water until it held together in a ball, then passed the dough through the machine to knead it. I oohed and aahed at how the dough morphed from a sticky, sandy clump to a smooth, elastic ball in just one pass through the machine.
After wrapping the dough in plastic wrap and letting it rest to allow the gluten to stretch, we fed it through the machine and marveled at how the wads of dough transformed into long, delicate strands of pasta. Honeybunch is in the process of building me a spiral-style pasta drying rack, but in the meantime we draped tea towels over plastic hangers, strung the pasta up on those and have them hanging from the curtain rods. It took some practice before we got a hang of how fast to feed the dough into the machine, when to use the "off" button, what length to trim the noodles at, and how to drape them across the hangers without stretching the noodles and causing them to break. But by the end of it, we had a feel for the process and expect it to become even easier with more practice.
We cooked some of the noodles fresh, and enjoyed a simple meal of noodles with butter and Parmesan cheese. I was delighted with the texture and flavor. We currently have about four hangers worth of the pasta drying, and I look forward to seeing if the dried product is superior to store-bought pasta as well. If it is, I suspect that we'll be making quite a bit more of the stuff very soon. Pasta is definitely wintertime food for us, and it's feeling more and more like winter every minute here.
No comments:
Post a Comment