illdothedisheslater

“Virtue is choked with foul ambition.” ~ William Shakespeare.

*****

“Cleaning out the fridge,

Cleaning out the fridge,

Where’d this jar of capers come from?

Cleaning out the fridge.” ~ The Beatles

I know, I know.  I’m supposed to be doing ambitious, ridiculous things here like braiding homegrown garlic, spit-roasting whole hogs on a spit made of dental floss and bobby pins, or stomping my own grapes into wine, which I would then filter through old panty hose or something.  I promise I will get ambitious soon.  I will get a cheese press, a grill, a smoker, or a herd of goats and just go nuts on them.  But honestly work has been kicking my ass for a month straight now.  The idea of a monstrous cooking project – a sinkful of dishes, cleaning the kitchen yet again to make it photogenic, running to the grocery so my greedy camera can eat more batteries…  Just exhausting.  Holiday season is nigh, the guilt-tripping bell ringers are out in full force, and as I’ve said before, all I really want to do is sit on the couch and eat cheese.  Wear knee socks.  Watch New Girl reruns on Netflix.  Then?  More cheese.

But since I’ll be taking next week off for holiday travel, I’d better make something.  And I think I promised colored pasta last week.  So.  Today’s project is fanciful Christmas pasta.  We’re going to learn how to make red and green, and maybe even stripes!*   I’ve also never tried red before, so I’m looking forward to effing it up for your amusement.  Allegedly you can even make blue using purple potatoes, but I tried that once and it came out…greige with purple specks and was too gross to even contemplate eating.

* Editor’s note:  author didn’t even attempt stripes.  Lazy bitch.

We’ll start with the basic pasta recipe from last week:  One and a half cups of flour, two eggs, one teaspoon of salt, but this time with only one tablespoon of olive oil and no water.   But first we’ll make our “dye”.

Boil one cup of chopped spinach in a little water for around fifteen minutes with a pinch of salt.

I imagine fresh spinach would be even more colorful and healthy, but I yam what I yam, so frozen and pre-chopped it is.

Now your house will be filled with the delicious smell of boiled spinach.  Pour off as much water as possible, but don’t bother with draining, straining, or colandering.  I then spend 10 minutes trying to find the blade for my mini-kweeze (food processor).  I’m only allowed 10 minutes of searching for lost items, otherwise a panic attack is triggered and my husband will come downstairs to find me sitting on the kitchen floor crying for no reason.  Then he’ll take me for a walk to distract me and provide distance from the problem and it’s cold outside.  Luckily I find it in nine minutes flat.  The whole thing is inexplicably filthy considering it sits in a cupboard for most of its life.  No pictures.

The spinach gets a spin until it’s chopped up into little bits.   Now to tackle the beets.  I have never cooked anything with beets before.  All I know is that they stain everything they touch, and I don’t want to wash my mini-kweeze twice, so here’s my solution:

The meat hammer is another impulse buy, which I have yet to use.  Part of the reason I bought it was that instead of being called a tenderizer or pounder, the label said “meat hammer” and I shouldn’t have to explain how many kinds of awesome that is.  I’ll only need about a tablespoon of beet juice/puree, so the rest of the can is kind of a waste.  Luckily beets are cheap.  I pound away carefully, so as not to rip the bag.  I snip off a corner and squeeze out what I need.

(Any other cooking blog – and there are literally millions – will advise you to puree the whole can, pour the contents into an ice-cube tray, freeze, then zip-lock baggie them for future use.  This is recommended for ev-er-y-thing.  If I was that kind of person, I would have a whole freaking freezer full of cubes made of chicken stock, beef broth, tomato paste, grated ginger, spinach puree, pesto… You name it.  I might be wasteful, but Martha I ain’t.  And I need that freezer space for meat.)

Look!  I made art!

Now I put together my dough recipe, halving everything into two portions.

Add one to two tablespoons of the “dye” into your well and knead, knead, knead.  Repeat with the other batch.  This dough will be much wetter and stickier than plain noodles, and I recommend wearing rubber/latex/vinyl gloves when working with beet juice.  Do not wear cotton or wool gloves, and for the love of God don’t try this with mittens!  Keep a dish of flour handy to add when it gets too sticky to work with.  Here’s how the dough turns out:

The “red” is actually kind of pinkish, but that’s fine by me.  It looks like raspberry sorbet.  It’s still neat.  As with the last recipe, the dough is wrapped tightly in plastic and rests in the fridge for ten minutes.  I spend those ten minutes doing dishes, dealing with my inexplicably filthy mini-kweeze, and Googling beets and spinach to make sure neither are poisonous for dogs.  Just in case.  (They are not!)  Also, in case you were wondering, this is not going to taste like spinach and beets.  The added flavor is so mild you may not even notice it – it will not compete with your sauce.

Did you know there’s an actual name for when beets make your urine turn red or pink?  It’s called “beeturia”, which is a lovely name for an otherwise upsetting condition.  Beeturia sounds like a futuristic space colony.  Nope, it’s pink pee.  Science!

We covered rolling and cutting last week, so I’ll just add a few comments and some pictures of my efforts.  Firstly you will note in the picture of the spinach dough that it’s mottled and speckly looking.  During the rolling process, the spinach specks will blend into the dough (through a process called magic) creating a smooth and uniform green color.  Another note – again this dough will be much stickier and wetter than the last – keep that flour handy and dust the dough before, during, and after rolling to keep it from gumming up your rollers.

See?  Magic!

Looks like an artisan version of the Wrigley gum factory on Doublemint/Big Red day.  Again, you have my apologies for the lack of ambition – I’ll spit roast a whole bison after Christmas maybe, or build a smokehouse out of a hollowed out log like Pa Ingalls.  Maybe I’ll slaughter something (not really).  But homemade pasta is nothing to sneeze at.  In fact it takes a lot of work, and if someone sneezed at it I’d be really pissed and have to start over because, well, gross.