Captain's Log: Sourdough Starter + Spinach Fettuccine Noodles

 Note to self:  If you think that you are going to remember when you started something.... you won't.


I'm on day ? of my sourdough starter project. (Grumbles to self per above). (Well, I'm a full week in at least given I tarried on writing this post).

My home is so fricken cold (by choice) that things that need a balmy environment will be disappointed.  Not having a reliable warm place, I had to make one.  I took my crockpot liner and set it on heating pad set on the lowest setting. It was perfect.  My sourdough starter, which I started with whole wheat flour and fed with AP flour seems healthy a bubbly.

If there is one good thing that came from COVID it was that people came to understand the domestic arts and the importance of having the simple reliance on their own skills to eat. Further, many many talented folks began videos.  In fact the quality and variety of videos on how to do stuff is amazing to me.  I surely rely on such.

That bread is so endemic to thousands of years of agrarian heritage--when what was first cultivated--yet so mysterious is a a wonderful paradox.  Sourdough in particular has become lifted from a simple artisanal  endeavor to something elevated to sublime.

Perhaps in search of the perfect "anything" is akin to chasing unicorns and pots of gold at the end of a rainbow.  The essence of being human is to achieve perfection--or at least codify the steps to achieving such an impossibility and cultivating guilt and frustration along the way.

However, it is this very quality (and I believe it a quality as opposed to some of our other, lesser traits), that creates the rich field of sharing knowledge, creating social connections on similarly minded.

I have more recently come across folks stating overtly what I have said many times:  most any type of endeavor engages not only our mind but our senses.  Cooking certainly engages all of the senses.  Sewing...not so much the need to smell unless you are ensuring your iron isn't setting your sewing area on fire or you have a cat that has made a naughty in your stash.  But you get what I mean.  And any of the engaged senses (however many or few) have to be taught/trained/refined.

I am happily doing something new in the kitchen (not that!).  Making pasta.  My maiden voyage fared extremely well.  I then moved to making spinach fettuccini.  It was magnificent though I had a moment doubt.

Captain's Log for the Past Week.

 Here's my Captain's Log for this week:

  • My hermit thrush and my white-throated sparrows are still here.  (My captain's log for overwintering birds).
  • I continue to work on the 49 LeMoyne Stars needed for the quilt that I'm working on. I'm down to the last 5.  I continue to enjoy making these, but it has been time consuming.
  • I began a sour dough starter.  I had one some years ago, and it when bye-the-bye due to time/interest constraints.  It's not dead yet.
  • Allergies are killing my son and me.  We both suffer though we take appropriates meds. I went to BJ's for foraging (food costs are up, up, up).  Met several allergy sufferers there too)
  • Pour over coffee.  I pulled my French Press out last week. I have had this for years.    It only makes about 10oz...and it takes more time.  But it does taste better.  I regrouped from french press to pour over using gold mesh (fine) filter basket from long dead coffee makers.  It makes great pour over coffee with less muss/fuss.  Yes, I have a regular coffee pot--a very nice one--but I have grown to prefer this coffee (and I can modify ratios), so the menfolk can enjoy the pot.
  • I scored some Starbuck Holiday blend and the local salvage store.  Very good and very cheap at 5.99 for a lb, which is about $8 cheaper per bag than anywhere else.  Yes, it goes out of date this month, but coffee to my palate has a long shelf life.
  • Ran out of dishasher tabs. Used baking soda + few drops of Dawn...it worked in a pinch though silverware not as cleans as I liked. But it beat handwashing everything else.  My last load I was too generous with the Dawn and ended up with suds the size of Montana.  I'm now fully stocked on dishwasher tabs...and know that I have a way to work in a pinch, so long as the liquid is only a pinch in the future.

By the end of the week, I'll have a chance to make some sourdough break.

 

 


A Cooking First: Homemade Pasta

 I'm intrepid in the kitchen.  I like to try all manner of things.  Most recently, I began making potato gnocchi, not because we ate a lot of it in the past.  In fact, I don't think I had eaten it at all prior to my finding a recipe that called for it that I wanted to try. That lead to my curious mind moving to the  "how would I?" moment on wondering how I would make it from scratch.  I generally make all my baked goods from scratch.  I don't recall buying a boxed cake mix in decades.

Thanks to all of the excellent ethersphere contributors, I found a successful method of making the gnocchi.  It was easy, delicious, and I enjoyed doing it.

Switch to a different genre:  pasta.  I love pasta.  We eat it weekly.  But I've never tried to make it from scratch. I again had one of those "How would I?" moments.  Again, the ethersphere did not disappoint.  In fact, there are probably so many pasta making videos out there that I could watch them for the rest of my life.  

I tend to be pretty objective about my approach to things.  I embrace my inner nerd.  I like to know the optimum way to make things--not how the hillbilly kitchen or the Italian grandmother makes it.  Enter Helen Rennie.  Helen Rennie is a cooking instructor.  I stumbled upon her videos, and I like her approach.  Below is the video that I used for my maiden voyage.



I ordered a set of pasta rollers for my Kitchen Aide.  I found them on markdown and bought them at a nice discount.  However, they are still an investment at > $200.  I always look for these types of items when I can find them. I would not make this were it not for the convenience of the roller and cutter attachments.

The attachments couldn't be easier to manage as I soon learned in making the batch last night.  Though HR says that it is unlikely that your eggs will weigh more than 185g...my eggs and yolks clocked in over 200 grams.  I just whisked, I pulled off the excess.  I found that I needed a little more than 185g of liquid to my flour.  And I measured my flour on the scale with grams.

The hardest part was kneading the dough.  It is not like any dough I've worked before.  Again, her instructions were clear and concise.

My family REALLY enjoyed the fettuccine that I made as a side dish.  I made a cheddar sauce to go with them as my Parmesan  stores were too small to do anything but put it in a soup pot--the little nub that I had.  It was so much more flavorful and delightfully toothsome.  (I used bread flour as she recommends, and the texture and taste were superb).

Her video makes the sensible approach of focusing on common mistakes.  I like knowing where the "risks" are and how to mitigate them--in all things.

So was it worth the time and effort?  Indeed it was.  To be sure, it was not nearly as convenient as opening a box.  But it was no more difficult nor time consuming than making gnocchi.

If pasta is something that you enjoy AND you enjoy the process, take a look at the video and consider giving it a try.