Chicken Librarian Makes: Pasta Infusions!
Hello friends! Here we are with another installment of Chicken Librarian Makes! This week we made pasta but infused the pasta dough with spinach. I have a couple of things to say and then you'll find the recipe below and step-by-step directions in the video above. First, you'll notice that you've seen the recipe below a few times. That's the beauty in a good recipe. Once you find a recipe and you've tested it, tweaked it to your satisfaction, you'll keep going back to it again and again. So. if you are interested, you've seen the recipe here and here. And now here. Hehe!
Second, pasta infusions is one of the things I've wanted to do for a long time. So you'll see it on rotation via Chicken Librarian Makes. I want to use seasonal ingredients to spruce up my pasta making. And that's exactly what I've decided to do! So I hope you'll join me for one of these pasta making sessions. Or make your own and then share it with us all!
And finally, I know I know, we'll get to the recipe in just a sec! if you recall from this post, then you'll know I mentioned these books would be making another appearance! They are really good resources to have on hand when it comes to understanding pasta. And seeing as pasta will continue to be on rotation with the Chicken Librarian Makes series, you'll keep seeing these books! Okay. Now for the recipe!
Pasta with Spinach
recipe from here
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
12 ounces baby spinach
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup water (reserved from spinach)
Instructions:
Start out by blanching your spinach leaves. To do this you will need some boiling water and then some ice water. Place your leaves in the boiling water for a minute or two. Then remove and place immediately in the ice water. Once they’ve cooled, place them in a colander to drain. Next you will need a tea towel to strain all the water out of your spinach. You will want to reserve this water to use in your pasta dough. Place the spinach in the tea towel and using a twisting motion, squeeze as much liquid out of your leaves as possible. Set the strained spinach water aside. As an aside, we blanch our leaves, strain them, and then freeze them so we usually have already blanched spinach at the ready. If you do freeze them, you can skip the blanching technique above because you’ve already done that. Just thaw them then squeeze all that yummy juice from them. You’ll use that juice as described above.
Next you will want to chop your leaves very finely. You can either pulse them in your food processor for a more liquified spinach that will incorporate completely into your dough. Or you can hand chop them with a knife. Your results will have more 'clumps' of spinach in the dough. You can't go wrong either way. Once you've chopped them, set them aside.
Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Stir salt and flour together and then make a well in the center of the flour. Crack both eggs into the center then put the spinach in and reserved water. Using a fork, start mixing the flour, eggs, spinach, and water until all are incorporated. Your dough should be slightly sticky. If it’s too dry, add some warm tap water until you get the correct consistency.
Once the dough comes together, take it out of the bowl, place on a floured cutting board, and start kneading. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Then place dough in plastic wrap for at least 30 minutes but no more than 4 hours, at room temperature (you can refrigerate until ready to use if not using within 4 hours).
Now you’re ready to roll it out and shape it into whatever shape you’d like. It's that easy! If you'd like more information on how to roll and shape your pasta, see this post. Happy pasta making friends!
'til next time
-k
xoxo