In the Kitchen- January 20th

By Chef Moreno & Cinzia Miotto

 Pasta! Pasta! Pasta! Eventually you must have known that I was going to write about pasta. Everywhere I cook, my reputation precedes me about how good my pasta is.

I opened the 1^st. restaurant in Prince George (Da Moreno Ristorante 1992) that took Italian food and especially pasta seriously.

Da Moreno opened as a casual trattoria and evolved into  P.G.’s finest restaurant by the mid 90’s.

With the economic downturn of the late 90’s,I opened Cimo’s Mediterranean Grill (2001-sold it in 2004) with the idea of serving high quality food in a casual atmosphere with decent prices. I wanted to have a menu that was pasta driven and also be able to sell pasta in a market place setting by the kilo.

I then proceeded to open Bis Moreno in Vancouver (2003-sold it 2005) and introduced pasta as high art.

I introduced fresh pasta to P.G. shortly after opening Da Moreno, at the busiest of times I was making about 50 lbs. of fresh pasta a day. There are people that prefer fresh pasta over dried pasta.

I used to prefer fresh over dried at one time but with the availability and importing of some great pasta from Italy, you don’t necessarily have to use fresh all the time. There’s no doubt that fresh pasta is better when you’re making ravioli or any type of stuffed pasta. I do prefer fresh pasta when I make a broad noodle-pappardelle, lasagna; it allows me to control the thickness of the pasta. When I cook spaghetti or angel hair I like to use dried because it’s lighter in texture.

There are many different recipes for pasta, if you’re lucky enough to have a pasta machine at home, you’re able to use 100% durum semolina flour(durum semolina is a very tough or hard flour and almost impossible to knead by hand.)

If you have one of those machines you crank by hand you will have to make pasta with regular flour or “00” flour. This pasta is also a little lighter than the semolina pasta.

I was trained by a chef that was from Tuscany. Tuscans take their pasta very seriously.

In Italy you don’t order pasta at a restaurant or make it at home based on the sauce, it’s all about what kind of shape and texture you want and the sauce is secondary. Certain sauces match with certain shapes.

For instance angel hair pasta goes well with light sauces that are delicate in flavor and texture.  Can you imagine the thin angel hair with a thick and heavy meat sauce?  It will come out in a big mushy mess!

Meat sauce tends to match well with short pasta-penne.rigatoni, also spaghetti (as long it’s a thicker spaghetti-there are a number of different thicknesses of spaghetti out there.)

When you cook pasta you’ll want to make sure you use a big enough pot, wait until the water boils and then add a generous amount of sea salt. Do not add any oil to the water (the oil will coat the pasta and then the sauce won’t adhere to the pasta.)

Also it’s important not to add too much sauce (a good rule is when you have taken your last bite of pasta there should be just enough sauce to soak up with one piece of bread.)

The recipe this week will be the basic fresh pasta recipe for a hand cranked machine. Remember to be patient; it may take you a few attempts to achieve the results you want. Have fun.

Recipe:

-about 2 cups of flour-make well and add 4 eggs

-with fork start to beat and bring in flour to center add ½ eggshell of water

-knead until you’re able to form a ball-add a teaspoon of olive oil or white wine-knead until smooth and firm

-let the pasta rest for about 20 min.

Then proceed to feed the machine-starting w/the largest thickness to smallest (this is another way to knead the dough.)

-once it’s thin enough you can use the sheets for lasagna or cut and make fetuccine,pappardelle,cut squares to make ravioli.

Cinzia’s wine suggestion: for a tomato based sauce I recommend Chianti from Tuscany or a Cab-Merlot blend from B.C.

Buon Appetito!

Chef Moreno and Cinzia Miotto are owners of the White Goose Bistro in Prince George B.C.

Chef Moreno is available for private cooking lessons and catering

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