Sunday experiments

You ever just been lazing around on a Sunday thinking, "Man, I have no chores, no responsibilities, all the time in the world, and plenty of energy to spend on cooking!" while surveying your property? Me neither, but I chose to ignore my responsibilities to spend a few hours making spaghetti and meatballs from as close to scratch as I could. 

I actually read a recipe for making pasta. It said to make a "nest" out of two cups of flour, then crack three eggs into the middle with a little olive oil and salt. I decided I wanted to be fancy, so I added in some basil, oregano, and parsley. I like my noodles to be interesting.

I would like to quickly note: I am not Jacques Pépin, Martha Stewart, or Garden Contessa, so I don't have fancy little herbs growing just outside my door. I like using fresh ingredients as much as possible, but it's not always possible. I couldn't find oregano or basil at Kroger, so I grabbed one of these little bastards. They're dried herbs that come in a conveniently lidded plastic cup, and there are a few different varieties you can pick up. If someone wants to talk shit about only using what you have available they can fuck themselves. This shit is legit.

Anyway, my pasta recipe said to mix the flour into the egg mixture. A few things it did not mention:

1. If you're doing this on a flat surface (as directed), the egg is going to do it's damnedest to go fucking everywhere. If you're like me and don't have anywhere to let the egg run, you're going to be spending your first few minutes of kneading just trying to use your hands to scrape egg back into the flour and/or flour into the running egg to try to slow it down. It's a pain in the ass, and the best solution I've thought of is saying "fuck it" and just using a bowl next time. We'll see how it goes.
2. They like to show you the finished product. They don't show you the absolute clusterfuck of stages between "nest with eggs" and "pretty doughball." I spent a few minutes wondering if I had used the correct ingredients, or whether I had used enough or too much, or whether I even knew what the fuck "kneading" means. 

Eventually, I ended up with a dough ball of sorts. It didn't look as pretty as the Internet Pictures, and that's because I had fucked it up slightly - there wasn't enough moisture. I didn't actually realize that until I started trying to roll out the pasta, but we're not there yet. Just know: if your dough looks like this ball of shit, it needs a little moisture. When my ball of dough was complete, I cut it into four semi-equal chunks and set aside three of them.

The next step is to roll the dough out into an oval. I used my rolling pin for this part. When I figured out my dough was too dry, I did dip my fingers in a bowl of water and kneaded the dough a little bit before rolling. It doesn't take much to get it wet enough, so don't go pouring a bucket of water on your doughball. You don't have to worry about getting it super thin (unless you're only using the rolling pin to roll out your pasta, in which case: good luck), maybe about an eighth of an inch or so? I didn't measure.

I ran my dough oval through my pasta maker on it's thickest setting three times, then the second thickets three times, then once more on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth settings to get it really fucking thin. The instructions I was semi-following had a step about how to make sure the pasta was even and rectangular, but even when I tried following that, mine came out wonky as hell, so I just started ignoring that. It was fine; I'm not entering into some Hell's Kitchen Perfect Pasta Shape Competition. I'm making spaghetti at home.

The next steps were to "dust a baking pan with flour," then "dust half the pasta with flour," then "fold the pasta in half and dust with flour," and I clearly don't know what the fuck "dust with flour" means. I just threw some flour on the pan, dipped the pasta sheets around in it a little bit, and got them out of the way so I could move onto the next one.

The last step is to cut the noodles. My pasta maker has wide and thin options, and I opted for thin because spaghetti and meatballs. When the spaghetti was actually made, I stuck all of it onto a plate and out of the way so I could start on my sauce and meatballs.

Pro tip: don't cut yourself when you're clearing out your pasta cutter. I still don't really know where I got myself, but I didn't feel it until I touched it after noticing blood dripping into my sink. Other pro tip: keep a first aid kit in your kitchen if you're a fucking jackass like me. Other other pro tip: don't drop knives, especially if you wear flip flops in the kitchen.

Since I was in the mood to do everything in the most difficult way imaginable, I decided to make my own tomato puree for my sauce. I used a whole package of Campari tomatoes, which are about 1.5-2x the diameter of golf balls. 

I peeled and pureed eleven of those fuckers and this is all I got out of them. I apparently need to use a shit ton more tomatoes for a tomato sauce. I'll figure that out later, though.

With the tomatoes done, it was time to make some meatballs. I used a pound of 90/10 ground beef, a pound of 80/20 ground pork (the package said it was "Duroc" pork, and I spent the rest of the afternoon singing "Please keep off of the grass, shine your shoes, wipe your...face! Duroc is, Duroc is, Duroc is a per-fect plaaaaace!" in my head), some caramelized sweet onion, a bit of salt, a bit of black pepper, some more of the dried "Chopped Italian Herbs," a handful or so of oats, and a mound of Asiago cheese for my meatballs. Wearing gloves so as not to get my fingernails or bandaid covered in raw meat, I mixed that shit together as thoroughly as I could.

Did you know that rolling out two pounds of meatballs ends up giving you a ton of fucking meatballs? I made them a little larger than I normally go for and still ended up with thirteen of the motherfuckers. Luckily, I love meatballs, so I wasn't upset.

To round out the vegetation in this meal, I diced some more sweet onion and sliced some garlic (clear bowl), chopped some celery and halved some black olives (blue bowl), and sliced a few mushrooms (black bowl). You can even see the spaghetti there in the corner. 

I used my Dutch oven for this since there were so many fucking meatballs. Starting off, I had the burner set to medium-high heat and, once the Dutch oven was hot, I added in some butter and olive oil, then used the melted fat to brown my meatballs. I did not cook them all the way through, but instead rolled them around some to get the outsides all browned up. We do this and then finish cooking the balls in the sauce so the outside doesn't get burned or dry as hell while still giving some flavor and color to the outside. Nobody likes bland, gray balls.

Once the meatballs were done (I did them in two batches), it was sauce time. I took the Dutch oven off of my burner to let it cool for a couple of minutes and turned my head down a bit, then put the pot back on and got to saucing. I started with the clear bowl and once the onions had been sweated a bit and the garlic was just starting to brown on the edges, I added in the blue bowl. When the celery began browning on the edges, I dumped in my mushrooms, added a bit of salt to draw out their moisture, then mixed it all together and let it simmer for a minute or two.

When the mushrooms had started to soften a little bit, I dumped in my tomato puree and about a cup of red wine, then waited for it to come back to a simmer. It was at this point that I realized this sauce was not going to be red like Fazoli's. "Fuck it, I'm hungry," says I.

When the sauce got back to a simmer, I placed my meatballs back in and WOULDN'T YOU FUCKING KNOW IT, THEY ALL FIT PERFECTLY! Turns out thirteen big balls is the perfect amount to fill a Dutch oven. I put on the lid, turned the heat down to low, and let this cook for about 45 minutes.

After that 45 minute span was up, I flipped the balls, noted that I'd essentially made a fragrant brown gravy, and put the lid back on for another half hour or so. 

Once my that second period of ball cooking was done, I pulled one out to make sure it was cooked properly. It was. I ate it. It was delicious. I pulled out the rest of the meatballs and set them aside while I cooked my pasta. Since the noodles were fresh, I only had to drop them into (salted) boiling water for about 45 seconds to cook them, then I transferred them to the Pot'o'Sauce to soak up that flavorful goodness.

I did have a little fun with plating. I started off by rolling up a couple sheets of prosciutto because, as anyone can tell you, adding more meat is always a good idea.

I actually did a halfway decent job of rolling up my pasta for once. I just used a pair of tongs, grabbed a bunch of noodles, and rotated the tongs to wrap the noodles around the end, then carefully slipped that roll into my bowl. I spooned a little bit of the veggies and sauce on top to give it a little more character.

Finally, I added a few meatballs to the bowl, spooned a little sauce on top of them, and finished by dropping a little shredded Asiago and cracking a little pepper on the spaghetti.

Appearance-wise, this was not what I was going for. I wanted a rich red sauce; instead, I got a brown sauce. Luckily, it tasted fucking amazing, especially with the herbed spaghetti and meatballs. I learned a few important lessons about making the noodles, so next time should go more smoothly. I also need to add a bit more salt to my meatballs; they were great, but could have been just a touch better. Once I figure out the way to make a red sauce using fresh tomatoes, though, it's game time.