Busiati; Pasta Recipe

One of our food highlights was eating busiati with trapanese. Busiati (or busiate I can't tell what's correct) is a special pasta shape found only on the west coast of Sicily; originating in the town of Trapani. Trapanese (its name gives it away as also being from Trapani) is an uncooked, hand pounded sauce of tomatoes, roasted almonds, basil, mint, garlic, and olive oil (link to sauce recipe) that is commonly served with the busiati. We fell in love with the shape for its look and its ability to hold a significant amount of sauce and knew we had to try making it when we got home.

We read that busiati is still being made totally by hand in the region but after having made it at home I really can't see how this is possible. Even after gaining some reasonable proficiency, it takes Tarah and me working together like 30 minutes to form this recipe into busiati, and that's only enough for like 2 to 4 people.

THIS IS ONLY AN APPROXIMATION
There seem to be a number of different ways of making busiate which you can see many examples of and videos of on the web (I especially like these two video 1 and video 2). But instead of rolling "worms" of pasta dough we simply rolled the dough into fettuccine noodles and wrapped those around a skewer. Also, this is my normal pasta dough recipe but actually buciati is traditionally made with a simple flour water dough. Next time I make them I'll try the traditional methods but for now I just wanted to make an approximation. And I have to say they have been really good.

Pasta Recipe -
- 2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
- 2 eggs
- Olive oil
- healthy pinch of Salt

Put the flour and salt in a food processor and pulse to mix. Add the eggs and ~2 Tbs of olive oil. Mix until it looks like homogeneous bread crumbs. while the mixer is running start adding water. This should only take a couple or few tablespoons. When the dough seems like it's starting to come together let it mix for a while longer and see if it will form a ball. If not add a little more water. Kneed the ball for just a little while then let the dough rest for 15 minutes. Divide the dough into quarters. Roll it out to a #5 on the Atlas pasta roller and cut into fettuccine noodles. Cut these noodles in half so you now have two piles of fettuccine noodles that each represent 1/8th the total recipe and are ~6 inches long. We found a wood skewers to work well for wrapping around. It is important for the pasta to dry for several hours or overnight to ensure that they hold their shapes during cooking. We cooked one batch just after rolling and they almost completely unrolled themselves. The finished dish below is from our Italy trip.

Paella with Xavi

Our very good friend Xavi from Spain visited us this weekend and we had an incredible time showing him around Seattle. We went out to see Eldridge Gravy - which was a kick ass energy packed show - on Friday night. On Saturday we went to Theo Chocolate in Fremont and down to the Pike Place Market for groceries and to have lunch at Uli's Sausage. I'll digress for just a minute to give a little plug for Uli's. If you haven't checked out Uli's for a while you may not know that they turned what used to be the sausage factory into a nice little eating area where you can get grilled sausages and have beer from the Alpine Brewing Co. Uli's is so fricking great; actually the whole market is just amazing. On a different path of digression; I get annoyed when Seattleites dismiss the Market and proclaim it to be for tourists. I love the market. It is touristy, but that's because it's great. It's one of the last of its kind in the US and a true treasure. I try to walk down to the Market at least a couple times a month. OK enough of my digressions. We got what we needed and headed home to cook up one of the gastronomic highlights of the weekend, seafood and chicken paella. It was done with a lot of Spanish intuition so I tried to take notes as Xavi cooked but this is kind of a rough recipe.


Paella Recipe

ingredients

• Olive oil
  
• 2 dried ancho chilies - with the stem and seeds removed
• 1 head of garlic
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 chicken - pieced
  
• ~20 shrimp, shells left on
  
• ~20 calamari, cut into rings
  
• ~20 mussels
• 1 tsp of Chiquilin Food Colourant (optional)
  
• 28 oz can whole tomatoes - lightly puree in blender
• 1 bag of frozen peas
  
• ~3.5 cups paella rice
• ~10 cups of 50/50 chicken stock and water
  

This recipe if for a 22 paella pan. This is the size that conveniently fits on a Weber BBQ. Starting inside on the stove add ~ 1 cup of olive oil to a large frying pan and fry the dried anchos over medium heat until almost burnt. They have done their job and imparted the oil with the necessary flavor so just discard them at this point (keep some that aren't blackened if you want a stronger chili flavor). Next, with the skins still on, fry the garlic cloves until very cooked and starting to blacken. Reserve these. Then fry the bell pepper until it's well cooked and reserve. Now on med-high, fry the chicken with the intention of browning it. It's not necessary to fully cook the chicken since it can finish cooking in the paella pan. The pan is nice and hot now and you can cook the shrimp - with their shells still on - very fast and finally the calamari rings will cook in literally just a flash. Add your canned tomatoes and fry untill reduced and thick. OK now your done inside.

You will have to work out the timing but meanwhile you will have started a nice hot charcoal fire. I used one full chimney of mesquite charcoal plus a couple extra pieces to fill out the grill. Set your paella pan over the fire and add ~ 1/2 cup olive oil and all of your rice. Stir it making a nice even layer over the pan and cook stiring frequently untill the rice begins to smell nice and sweet, a little popcorney. Make a nice uniform layer with the rice; at this point you will not stirr the rice again. Place on top of the rice your chicken pieces and all of the other fried yummies except for the tomatoes. Carefully, but quickly taking care not to burn your rice, add half the stock water mixture. In the remaining stock mixture stir in the tomatoe sauce and add to the paella. Finally add the muscles to the paella pushing then down into the liquid. Now all you have to do is make sure you have an even fire and rotate the pan if necessary and wait. DO NOT STIR. If you are running out of water and the rice is still not done you may need to add a small amount. You want to run out of water just as the rice is finishing and then leave it on the heat for a little while longer to brown the bottom. This crackly bottom is extra yummy.

I hope this is clear enough. If you have questions feel free to ask me.

Pizza Dough Recipe

I have been working on this recipe for a while now. I have experimented with olive oil, yeast levels, rising times, moisture levels, bread vs. all purpose, and even "00" imported pizza flour. I find this recipe gives a delicious, chewy, and thin crust. I have mostly been using it in my home oven with pizza stones but I have also successfully used my dough in some outdoor wood fired ovens. This recipe makes 6+ dough balls (typically I make double this and it makes 13 balls). WARNING - it's ready on the third day.

(note I updated this recipe as of 4/2/10. I realized that I was basically never getting all the flower mixed in so this time I weighed the extra flower and this in now a proper representation of the flower to water ratio.)

825g Organic all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. Active dry yeast
4 tsp. Fine Sea Salt
2.5 cups Water (1 cup warm for proofing the yeast and 1.5 cups cold)

Add the yeast (plus just a dash of raw sugar) to the warm water and let stand until bubbly and active (this may take 10 minutes or more but it's important so let it go until obviously active). Add yeast mixture and remaining water to bowl of mixer along with about 1/2 the flour. Mix the "batter" like dough with a wood spoon for a few minutes (always in the same direction to help begin to develop the long gluten strands . Add 1/2 the remaining flour and Knead with the dough hook for 5 minutes. Mix the salt with ~1/2 cup of the remaining flour and add mixture to dough. Continue to knead for ~5 more minutes. Let the dough rest for 5 or 10 minutes then pull it out of the mixer for a final hand kneading. As you kneed, work in enough of the remaining flour such that it ends up being sticky but not so sticky that it's difficult to work with. Continue kneading until the dough is nice and smooth; maybe another 10 minutes. Form the dough into a somewhat tight ball and oil lightly with olive oil. Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for ~1 hour at room temp or until the dough has doubled. Refrigerate for 1 day.

Remove from fridge and let warm up for ~1 hour. Cut the dough into 6 pieces (they should each be ~205 g). Form the doughs into nice tight balls. This can be done by cupping the dough in your hand and sliding it across the counter. The friction of the dough on the counter should be pulling the outer surface tight. This step is actually quite important so do some practicing. You don't want to tare the outer surface but you do need good tension on the ball. See the link below to my video of making dough balls. Lightly oil your balls (tee hee) with olive oil, place on Sil Pat or well oiled cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and place back in the fridge for another day.

Dough Ball Video

Remove from fridge 2 to 3 hours before you make your pizza so they are easy to work with. I like to make a fist with my left hand (non-dominate) and stretch it over that fist. It will be quite sticky so you will need to flour the table and you hands and the dough. Stretch it fairly evenly until it's 10-11" in diameter. The center will tend to get too thin leaving thicker outsides so try to avoid this.

Preheat oven with the pizza stone in it to 550 F (or as hot as your oven will go). This needs time to really get fully up to temp so I usually turn this on ~1.5 hours before I start making the pizzas. Or if your using a wood fired oven like ours (http://farsi-una-pizza.blogspot.com/search/label/Horno/) then we typically wait for the base of the oven to be in the 700 range and the ceiling at that point is well out of range of the 1000 degree limit of our IR gun.

Farsi Una Pizza!!

Sourdough Bread, Country-Style French

This is a page out of my notebook that gives a description of the sourdough bread that I've been concentrating on perfecting. See the preceding post for a description on how the seed culture was started.


The recipe is based on the "Country-Style French" out of the "The Village Baker" by Joe Ortiz. I have been doing all my proofing in the oven with just the light turned on. This has been working great to keep the oven at a stable 70 F.

This iteration of the bread turned out the best looking but was too stiff to knead well (at least that's my explanation) so its crumb was a little cakey and crumbly not chewy. If you follow the directions without the addition of the final 100g of flour and then add some more as needed (maybe another 25-50g) the hydration should be good and kneading easier. Some loaves I have made too wet which ends up with good crumb but they tend to just expand out and make kinda flat spread out loaves.

Sourdough Starter - Leaven

Steven (my neighbor and framily member) and I have been working on sourdough breads now for a month or so. This posting includes a page from my "Pizza and Breads" notebook that details the steps we took to make an active sourdough starter or leaven. We have now used this leaven numerous times and I have given it out to others.