Fresh pasta making afternoon yesterday, these were busiate shapes. Sauce was puttanesca, it came out very rich and slightly over seasoned. The dough was the southern Italian style: 100g flour, 50g water per person. I made this in my food processor but it's a funny dough, starting off very crumbly, like sand, then coming together after a bit of a rest and some encouragement. I'd be tempted to mix for a few minutes in the processor then hand knead next time.
I bore the freezing cold and made myself a pizza. Turned out rather well! Probably didn't need so much on top, but apart from that, good stuff. Homemade mozzarella and feta-like cheeses, as well as some nice salami my buddy Evan made in Italy. Happy Monday folks!
My pizza oven stone got broken by my cat making a particularly adventurous leap onto the greenhouse shelf. She got a nice hour or two in the sun, my pizza oven hasn't been used since. I bought some Caputo flour recently and after a couple of failed BBQ pizza attempts, I went back to the method of pizza I used when I got started on the journey. The method is simply: preheat a griddle pan over the gas for 5 minutes or so, when it's ready, turn an oven grill on too. Stretch the pizza dough (it doesn't have to be fully), and drop it on the pan.
Medium firm tofu trial. I wanted it a bit firmer but I think the mould (a ricotta cheese mould) was a bit all for the correct pressure. The individual steps for making tofu are relatively simple, but there are quite a few: Soak the beans for 8hrs, liquidise with a set quantity of water, strain in a nut milk bag, heat up to around 80C, hold for 30 minutes, add gypsum (or another coagulant), stir, ladle into a mould lined with cheesecloth, press. I made some mabo dofu (pictured) and some home style tofu. I'm not saying I won't do this again, but it's probably on the rainy day side of the food projects I've done as it's relatively simple and cheap to buy locally.
