Ramp Pasta!
Hey friends! How are you? We're just over here getting things done. One of the things I'm getting done is making ramp pasta. It's ramp season here and boy is it an early one this year! So I thought why not share the recipe and tips and tricks with you all! But, first, the most important thing to do before making pasta, or anything homemade for that matter, is to turn on some music. My preferred genre is bluegrass, but you put on whatever feels right for you. Then you gather all your ingredients. For this recipe you will need: ramp leaves, eggs, flour, water, and salt. That's it. So gather your ingredients and supplies and let's get to it!
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup ramp leaves
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup water (reserved from ramps)
Instructions:
Start out by blanching your ramp 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 ramps. You will want to reserve this water to use in your pasta dough. Place the ramps in the tea towel and using a twisting motion, squeeze as much liquid out of your ramp leaves as possible. Set the strained ramp water aside. As an aside, we blanch our leaves, strain them, and then freeze them. We are using the last bag from last year's harvest. 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 ramp juice from them. You'll use that juice as described above.
Next you will want to chop your ramp leaves very finely. Ramps tend to be stringy so you'll want them chopped as finely as you can get them. Set 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 ramps in and reserved ramp water. Using a fork, start mixing the flour, eggs, ramps, 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. I'll walk you through a couple different options, including the one I did above. I use my pasta roller attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer, but you can certainly use a rolling pin to roll it out. I'm giving instructions on how to use the pasta attachment.
Cut your pasta into quarters, leave one out on the cutting board, place the others back in the plastic wrap until ready to use. Attach your roller to your mixer if using this method. Set the dial to "1". Turn machine on. Lightly flour both sides of your dough to prevent it from sticking to the rollers. Slowly feed the dough through the rollers at each level, twice. So, for example, run the dough through level 1 two times, then turn the dial to "2" until desired thickness is obtained. I went through level 4 because I wanted my dough to be slightly thicker since I was cutting it into shapes.
Once you have your sheet of pasta rolled out, now comes the fun part! Decide what shape you want to cut it into. You can use the pasta attachment to make different shapes (I have the attachments for spaghetti). Or you can make different shapes with tools you have right in your kitchen. You can cut the rolled dough into squares and make ravioli, farfalle, or even tortellini. You can cut the rolled dough into long strips of various widths and make tagliatelle, fettucini, pappardelle. I chose to cut my rolled dough into garganelli which looks just like a mini cannoli shell.
After rolling out my dough (one sheet at a time) I then cut it into squares (they're not uniform) and then rolled each square around a reusable straw. Two things to note: make sure your floured side is against the straw so it will slip off the straw without sticking. And I also had a bowl of water to dip my finger into and then dabbed on the pasta to seal the pasta together.
You repeat this process for each of the dough quarters above. Then you can eat it fresh or you can dry it. To dry it, just lay it out on cooling racks until dry. If you are making a long noodle shaped pasta, just hang it to dry. You can make your own drying rack or use whatever you have. You could use cookie sheets or the cooling rack as above. It should take anywhere from 12-24 hours for it to dry. You'll know it's dry when it snaps when broken. Then you can store it at room temperature in an air tight container.
So there you have it! It's that easy. The hardest part it rolling it out into shapes. And you have to decide what sauce to make! The ramps are still pretty powerful so you'll want a sauce that doesn't compete with it. I was also thinking that the dough might make great lasagna noodles!
That's it friends! Easy peasy! And if you don't know about ramps, see this post. I hope you all are doing just fine.
'til next time!
-k
xoxo