Barbabietole... Beets

Ever seen a raw beet? As with other vegetables, my first time upclose and personal with an unprocessed beet was in Italy. Even though it's beet season and I could have found fresh ones in the market, I cheated this month and bought precooked veggies from the store. I had two recipes to try, both involving hand-rolled pasta (until I buy a much needed electronic machine), and lots of trips to fit in in between.

Probably you're familiar with beets now that they've been popping up in salads more often in restaurants. Hopefully this chunky little root will continue to grace menus even more frequently and in a greater variety of dishes because it is true vitamin dynamite. According to World's Healthiest Foods (WHF), the red pigment in beets betalain is responsible for some of their anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. The WHF website does a very complete nutrient description, and also tells you how to best cool beets in order to maximize their health benefits.

In March, I attended a fresh pasta class in Genova (pictures of my yummy creations found here). A few days later while looking for recipes to try at home, I was captivated by the beautiful colors I found in the pictures of beet recipes. Thus the theme for this month.

Source: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2005/05/beet_ravioli_with_poppy_seed_butter

Source: http://it.paperblog.com/pasta-colorata-alla-ricotta-e-barbabietola-113388/

Be forewarned! Getting picture perfect results with the beet takes a few practice runs! Here's some advice to get flamboyant instead of cute results:

• The recipes that call for normal pasta and beets in the sauce (versus beets mixed directly into the pasta dough) produce flashier colors. As cooking breaks down the betalain pigment, the boiling process turns deep purple pasta into a Easter bunny violet.
• Hand rolled ravioli are hard to make thin enough to get the peak-a-boo effect of fuchsia through the pasta. Even if you use an electric pasta machine or pre-rolled sheets, to get the best color results, you'll need to use rice pasta or wonton wrappers as the Bon Appetite recipe suggests in its opening comments. (Suspicion confirmed by this blog).

Below are the results of my experiments. I've noted in both cases the original recipe source but recompiled here the recipes because I made some slight adjustments and added my own personal touches. Enjoy!

Mezzacuori di barbabietola con papavero e prosciutto

Half-Heart Shaped Beet Ravioli with Poppy Seed Butter and Prosciutto

(original Bon Appetite recipe here)

Ingredients:

For the pasta
- 1 3/4 cup soft grain white flour
- 1 cup whole grain wheat flour
- 4 large eggs
- pinch of salt

For the filling
- 2 large red beets (precooked, for cooking instructions click here or here)
- 1/3 cup fresh ricotta cheese
- 1/3 cup fresh goat cheese
- 2 tablespoons of breadcrumbs

For the "sauce"
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 1/2 tablespoons poppy seeds
- 4 thin slices of fresh cut uncooked Prosciutto
- freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Make the pasta

1. Wash your hands and have a bag of extra flour and a spatula ready nearby.
2. Pour the flour on a clean flat surface into a hollowed put volcano shape. Crack the eggs open and put them in the middle of the flour. Stop any loose streams of eggs by brushing the flour around and back towards the volcano walls. Sprinkle the salt over it all.
3. With the fingers of one hand (and one hand only! it's handy to keep the other hand clean) break the eggs yolks gently and begin to circle the eggs around, slowly mixing in the flour. Of egg runs off bring it back to the volcano with flour with your hand. As you mix more and more flour into the eggs, you will find it useful to scrape the work surface with the spatula so that all the flour egg mixture is integrated into the dough. Likewise, scrape the fingers of your working hand with the spatula to integrate these crumbs as well. Your goal is to work the mixture into a ball. I had to add a bit of flour to get there using the ingredient proportions Bon Appetite suggested. Just don't add too much otherwise your dough will be tough and impossible to roll out.
4. Knead the dough 4-5 minutes. I learned a neat trick in Genova to determine if the pasta dough is ready or not: rip off a bit of the dough and roll it between your palms to get a short fat cylinder shape. Trying ripping this tear of pasta straight down the middle. Of you make it, dough's ready. If not, keep kneading a bit.
5. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap until ready to roll and fill.

Make the filling
6. In a food processor, purée the beets. If you don't have one of these useful contraptions like me, you can use the finest side of a cheese grater to make a fine beet pulp.
7. Mix the beet purée in a large bowl with the ricotta and goat cheeses and the breadcrumbs.

Construct the raviolis

8. Press your kneaded ball of dough into a flat rectangular shape. Run it through the largest setting on your pasta machine. Fold and run again. Repeat with the next thinnest setting and them for every next setting until that of 1/16 th of an inch run the rectangle of dough as is. If you are hand rolling the dough like I did, make sure your work surface was cleaned and dried and generously floured before beginning. As for the thicknesses and shape, do your best to eyeball it! The shape isn't as important unless you're making square shaped ravioli.
9. Cut out your ravioli. I was taught not to re-clump the bits of dough between the cut pasta but instead to cut what's left into small pieces, mix with lots of flour (so they don't stick together) and freeze for later use in a minestrone or simple plate of pasta.
10. Prepare a small bowl mostly of water and a spoonful of olive oil and wash your hands again.
11. Put a spoonful of filling on one ravioli, and with one finger run the water/oil mixture along one half of the ravioli seem. Fold and pinch together the seem to close.... Easier said than done! I found it useful to hold the ravioli dough in one hand and use the other hand to push the filling into the partly closed ravioli, keeping one hand at all times clean of the beet mixture. I closed the top of the heart first and finished by closing the tail.

Cook ravioli and sauce 

12. Put a pot of salted water on the stove to boil.
13. In the meantime, rip prosciutto into 1 cm by 1 cm -ish size pieces and put in skillet with a drop of olive oil.
14. When the prosciutto is getting crispy, add the butter to the pan and when that's melted add the poppy seeds. Turn off the heat until the ravioli are cooked.
15. Carefully deposit the ravioli into the boiling water. Depending on how thick your pasta is, it could take anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes to cool them. Wait till they float mostly to the top of the pot, taste one and then judge accordingly.
16. Relight the skillet with sauce and carefully transfer the cooked ravioli to this skillet. With a slotted spoon or spatula turn the ravioli around under they are covered with the butter, seeds, and prosciutto. Sprinkle a pinch of pepper in there if you feel like it.
17. Transfer the ravioli to serving plates and sprinkle generously with freshly grated Parmesan. Viola! Enjoy your creations!

Tagliatelle di barbabietola con pesto siciliano

Beet Tagliatelle with Sicilian Pesto

(original pasta recipe in Italian here)

(original pesto recipe in Italian here)

Ingredients:

For the pasta
- 2 small beets (precooked, for cooking instructions click here or here)
- 2 3/4 cups soft grain white flour
- 2 eggs
- pinch of salt

For the sauce
- 1 lb cherry tomatoes
- 1 cup fresh fresh ricotta cheese
- 1 cup + 1 TBSP of parmesean cheese
- 2/3 cup pine nuts
- 1/3 cup almonds
- 1 cup + 1 TBSP of parmesean cheese
- 1-2 garlic cloves (up to you)
- 1 fistful of fresh basil
- 2/3 cup olive oil
- salt and pepper, and peperoncino (red pepper flakes) to taste


Instructions:

Make the pasta

1. Pureé the beets either with a food processor or with a cheese grater.
2. Follow the steps above, only this time add the pureed beets into the middle of the "volcano" with the eggs.

Make the pesto
1. Wash and cut up the tomatoes. Wash and then dry well the basil.
2. In a large mortar put together the basil, tomatoes, pine nuts, garlic, red pepper flakes, and salt (don't really need to add salt, especially if your ricotta cheese is the hard salted kind). Add in the oil and get to work grinding with your pistel.... if you don't have a mortar and pistel, use a food processor... or use a normal bowl and a hand-held blender.
3. Add in the cheeses and blend until you have a nice smooth sauce.
Enjoy!

Funghi...Mushrooms

Last night I had one of those heavenly food experiences... and I just couldn't wait to write about it until next week. We went to our friend's family restaurant in Settimo Vittone, a little town at the edge of the Piedmont region, almost in the Valle d'Aosta region of Italy where the Alps are in full force. Every time we go to this restaurant we leave totally satisfied and extremely full. Check out their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Settimo-Vittone-Italy/Osteria-La-Sosta/112546454587?ref=ts. They specialize in Piedmont cuisine, but last night they prepared us a special dinner of funghi (mushrooms)!

Check out what we ate:

The Piedmont tradition involves many appetizers. Our first one of the night was a plate of affettati, or sliced cold meat. We were served  some real delicacies: fresh, sweet prosciutto, savory lard (the word lard sounds nasty but believe me, cut right and of good quality, it tastes amazing), and salami made of potatoes and cow's blood.

The next appetizer started the funghi theme of the evening: raw mushrooms marinated in oil and vinegar.

Next, we ate one of my favorite dishes that I have discovered since moving to Torino: Albese meat... coated with buttery, sauteed mushrooms. Albese meat refers to thinly cut beef served raw. It has to be of good quality and to retain its particular rosey-red color, must be served immediately. This tradition comes from the Piedmont town of Alba, a small city in the Langhe region of northern Italy. The Langhe area is one of the major wine-producing regions of Italy, and wines coming from Alba are internationally known. If you search "carne albese" in Google, you'll see that there's even a Facebook page dedicated to it!

When everyone dug their forks into the next dish, I noticed that there was that silence that sub-consciously comes on when eating something that totally wows you and you momentarily forget where you are and who you're with because all your mind can focus on is how good the flavors are that are sliding over your tongue.  It was described to us as a flan ai funghi. The crust was soft, but slightly crispy. The egg inside didn't have an egg-y taste, but rather a creamy, buttery taste. The mushrooms folded and baked into the mixture retained their freshly-picked-from-the-forest taste. And the sauce on the plate made of Fontina cheese, served at the perfect temperature, made us lick our lips.

I was already pretty full at this point, but who could refuse what you see in the next picture?!? Tagliatelle ai funghi porcini.... the pasta was freshly made that afternoon, the mushrooms were big and plentiful. I feel lucky to have this yummy plate digesting right now in my stomach.  Ahhh...

My dessert didn't have mushrooms in it, but I'm including the photo to complete my meal, and because it pertains to my last post on chestnuts. To finish up last night, I ordered bavese alle castagne con panna - bavase I can't find a translation for, but it was basically like a sweet souffle, and castagne con panna means chestnuts with cream. 

The end of the last week, we also went out to eat mushrooms. I have to say that although this first restaurant was more pricey, and we enjoyed our meals, it can't compare with La Sosta. Here's some of the dishes we ate there:

funghi e carciofi fritti (fried mushrooms and artichoke hearts)

gnocchi al pomodoro e funghi (gnocchi in red sauce with mushrooms)

more tagliatelle ai funghi (can you see the difference?)

On the way home from the restaurant last night, our friend and adopted grandfather born and raised in Piedmont claimed he could recognized at least 100 species of mushrooms. Then he brought the number down to 60. He managed to list off six different types and their various characteristics: color, taste, level of poison.

In Italy, there are over 900 species of mushrooms![i] And there are a bunch of laws, permits and rules on how and when mushrooms can be harvested. They sprout in the humid and chilly fall months. Just be careful about mushroom hunting on your own because many are toxic and you should be accompanied by an expert to be able to tell apart the toxic ones from nearly identical-looking yummy ones.

Apparently, according to our trusted Piedmont friend, most mushrooms have low level of poisonous substances inside, and too many mushrooms can really wreak havoc on your system. You know you're eating among Italians when everyone is talking about how what you're eating affects a certain organ or function of your body. Last night, everyone made comments on how all these mushrooms were going to be giving at little hit to their livers. My (very brief) research shows that mushrooms can be very good for you. Studies have shown that they can prevent certain cancers, are good for the immune system, and were part of the first antibiotics.[ii]

In the States, and also in Italy, you can find dried mushrooms yearlong. Just make sure they didn’t package them with any special chemicals!

For this post, I would like to suggest a recipe I cooked up two years ago to win over my current boyfriend (because as they say not only in Italian but in many languages, “the way to a man’s heart is through is stomach”).

Polenta al forno con porcini e gorgonzola 

Ingredients:

polenta

Parmesan cheese

butter

shallots

porcini mushrooms (fresh or dried)

cream for cooking or whole milk

white table wine

gorgonzola cheese

salt and pepper 

Instructions:

Pre-heat the oven to 350ºF.

1. Boil about three times as much water as the amount of polenta you want to cook (the amounts for the cheese sauce that follows is enough to cover small amount of polenta for about 4 people).

2. When the water starts boiling, slowly pour in the polenta, constantly stiring and making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot. My good friend suggested that I add in a bit of grated Parmesan cheese at this point to give the polenta a little extra kick of flavor. I tried it with another recipe and it was great! Turn the heat down and keep stiring until the polenta becomes denser and pulls away from the pot.

3. Pour into an oven-proof pan and spread out evenly. Put in the oven the bake around 15 minutes. This will give it a more tender texture and make it possible to cut into little bars. (You can see in the picture that I didn't do this to mine the first time.)

4. If you have dried mushrooms, let them soak in warm water until mushroom-like again, probably around 20-30 minutes. Cut mushrooms into slices, I prefer them length-wise.

5. Melt 1.5 tablespoons of butter in a large pan.

6. Add the mushrooms and chopped up shallot, season with salt and pepper and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are softened and golden, around 7 minutes.

7. Add some wine, around 1/2 cup, and simmer until reduced by half.

8. Add the cream (or whole milk) and Gorgonzola cheese and cook over low heat around 7 minutes again. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

9. Pour on top of the baked polenta and serve!

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[i] http://www.funghiitaliani.it/angizio/LibroGiunti_02/Preview.pdf

[ii] http://www.health.pon.net/nmh.html