Crawling Through Slow Food

I must begin this post by saying, I am an advocate of slow food (a movement started in Italy to combat the growing culture of fast food and to prevent the art of real food preparation from disappearing). Because of my geographical location, I am not a member of a local chapter of the slow food movement. There is no chapter out here. We are hardly on the cutting edge of the culinary world in this small town. Which is ironic because the cutting edge idea is to return to the old methods of 100 years ago or more. One would think by being in the country we would have direct access to the old methods of cooking but sadly, we have access to fried chicken fast food chains. But still, I strongly support slow food when ever I can by our family's lifestyle. My favorite dish is an acorn squash cassoulet that takes more than half a day to make and I don't mind waiting for the complex flavors that this time yields. Neither does my little three year old chef. You have never seen a child more anxious to eat acorn squash than after a day's build up of anticipation as the house is filled with a mouth watering smell the entire afternoon. Slow food, it's worth it.







With all that out on the table, I can now discuss my latest culinary endeavor. It was an event I had been anticipating and preparing for for a long time. Specialty recipe books had been bought, read, scrutinized, and studied. Special equipment had been purchased well in advance. This was no spur-of-the-moment event. I had been waiting for this. I had WANTED to do this. Someone should have been there to remind me of this during my olympic cooking event.







The procedure started simply enough. The recipe called for 4 eggs and a few cups of flour. Really, two ingredients. It doesn't get much simpler than that. This is misleading I assure you. As I mixed the dough together I noticed there was little resemblance to the picture in the book. And I thought to myself that this is probably not a good sign. What is it I am trying to make you ask? Pasta.





I needed the dough for what seemed like an eternity and then let it rest. With a hobby of perfecting artisinal breads, I am no dough-needing newbie. But pasta dough is a completely different ball game than bread dough and it's beginning to look like I am out of my league.





Once my dough "rested" I began to roll a section of it with the stress, contemplation and thoughtful purpose of Leonardo De Vinci. Eager to achieve an amazing hand crafted product I continued to roll, and roll, and roll until it was finally thin enough to see through. As I read the next step, the pressure of stretching the already see-through dough through the pasta machine, set in. How am I not going to break this thin dough? I have been working on this forever and now I have to run it through this machine several times without screwing it up before I can cut in into tagliatelle! Why am I doing this? How much better can fresh pasta be? Maybe the Italians drink wine while making pasta and that's why they think this is fun. For the first time ever in my adventurous cooking history...I was in over my head. But wait, it gets better. Savannah appeared (I have no idea where she had been, it's all a blur) and wanted to help. Let me restate this, my 3 year old wanted to help me put my paper thin, time consumed, pasta dough into the machine.

My first reaction to Savannah's question was to yell across the house, "Mark, Savannah wants to help you do whatever it is you are doing." But at this point I felt my deed was doomed anyway so I not so delicately handed my hard work over to her. Soon, to my surprise, we had a rhythm. She turned the handle on the pasta press machine (while smiling widely and giggling) and I feed the dough in over and over again making it more and more fragile. It still resembled the picture in the book like a Cat in the Hat resembles War and Peace but who cares! Savannah was in heaven with the idea of making her favorite meal. Pasta! It's amazing how much fun you have once the pressure of perfection is taken away and failure is imminent. One would think it would be the other way around but when you have no pressure to succeed you can just enjoy!

The pasta was quickly finished and I began on the sauce with prosciutto. Yet another labor but this time, of love (our whole family has an unusual obsession with prosciutto). And by the end of the day tagliatelle al prosciutto was displayed on the table as if it were the Arc de Triomphe although deep inside I felt a little defeated by my initial reaction to pasta making. I had whole-heartily expected to love this art as I loved all slow food. Yogurt making, cultivating my own unrivaled rich broth, watching my dinner mature before my eyes in the garden, raising our own organic meat, and cooking food that has never seen a box or packaging have all been wonderful, flavorful, and rewarding experiences. But now it all comes down to this bite of homemade pasta. The one craft I did not immediately fall head over hills for. Would the texture and flavor be worth the stress and time?

The answer? Oh yes dear reader. Oh yes.

Next up??? Handmade pumpkin raviolis!