Sweet Potato/Curry Pasta

[bigmike&nan]

Lock your children up, Katy bar the door. BigMike got himself a KitchenAid Pasta Roller Attachment set...
I've been wanting one for so long - I make ok noodles and hand roll them, but it's not the same. I kept looking on eBay and online for the best deal. Suddenly Friday a seller in Florida had the set called KPRA for $129.00 with free USPS Priority Mail shipping included. Pulled the trigger. I got the obligatory email from the seller that he would be shipping it - well darn it, the thing arrived Monday in the mail - really fast delivery. WOW.

So today I am making a sourdough round (Day 6 of my starter) and using a leftover sweet potato and a bit of homemade curry powder for pasta my dough.


Mis en Place

1 cup cooked sweet potato
2-3 cups Bread Flour (no semolina in the house or I would have done half semolina/half bread flour)
1 cup water
1 tsp salt
1 scant tsp homemade curry powder

Preparation:

Peel sweet potato and add to mixer, add 2 cups flour, the salt, curry powder and half the water. Using dough hook start mixer on low until it starts mashing the sweet potato into the flour, add a bit more water and increase speed to medium. Beat for about 3 minutes - you want to see the dough totally pull away from the sides of the bowl, when the bowl edges are clean stop the mixer and add about another 1/2 cup flour. Mix on slow and then medium. Add flour until the dough barely holds together - you want the dough like a great pie crust, a little hard to pull together. Work dough about 5 more minutes, by then you will have clean bowl sides and the dough will be nice and tight. Remove from mixer and cover with plastic wrap to rest an hour.

Break dough into fourths and roll out and cut into your favorite shape. Having the luxury of the cutter attachments I will roll out and fold the dough in the roller attachment until I've worked the gluten a little more, then take each sheet it produces down into the thickness you want and cut fettucine. I'm going to do up a "sauce" of sauteed sliced mushrooms, chopped onions and a garnish of chopped scallions and parsley at the end. Cook the pasta, add a little of the pasta water to the saute pan your vegetables are in and combine the pasta into the vegetable pan. Then garnish with a little butter and some grated cheese off the heat. Sounds like a weird combination but I'm betting it'll be pretty good. Photos later.

 

[KatyTheChickenLady]

can't wait for the pics, very happy for you & your new tool/toy. One day I will get to pasta . . .

 

[bigmike&nan]

Busy day here, roasted some very high end coffee (a Costa Rican La Candelillia Tarrazu Geisha), made a sourdough round, the sweet potato/curry pasta and mopped the floors. Still got laundry to do - hoping the wife gets called for an ICE DAY tomorrow so wanted the house just so...

Rolling out the pasta with the KitchedAid is so painless - I rolled and folded the dough pieces 3 times on the fattest setting, the dough needed a dusting of flour - very moist after the rest. Then rolled it out to the THREE setting (kinda a fat noodle) and then changed attachments and cut the fettuccine - the rollers really even out the pieces so by the time you get it to THREE it's a wide even sheet. This is very cool. Will have to get some semolina and next time use some eggs - I figured the richness of the sweet potato would make the dough rich enough.

More later...

 

[bigmike&nan]

To say today was a busy day, well that's an understatement. The pasta turned out quite nicely - I slivered up two bacon strips, sauteed them in some EVO until browned, then sauteed the mushrooms and onions, later added 1Tbls chopped garlic and 1 cup chardonnay and simmered while the pasta was cooking - threw in the chopped scallions and parsley at the last minute, loosened it up with three ladles of pasta water, drained the pasta and tossed and simmered it in the "sauce" for 1 minute. Removed from heat and added 2 Tbls butter and 1 cup grated reggianno parmesan. It turned out quite nice. Here's the photo - I am bushed... Enjoy

 

[2DogsFarm]

I covet your pasta maker.

I've only used a hand-cranked version once, but still the results were amazing.
A friend & I made tons of pasta: fettucine, tagliatelle, tortellini & ravioli
For one recipe we used Delicata squash - the pasta had a very faint flavor of the squash - YUM-O : 9

How much sweet potato flavor did your pasta have?

Have you tried adding fresh herb leaves to the dough?
Just the leaves, as stems can poke through.
We used basil, Italian parsley & fresh oregano - so pretty with the leaves showing through the pasta!

 

[bigmike&nan]

2Dogs,

Long time my friend !!
I had a hand roller I got at a Habitat For Humanity store, and it seemed ok, so I spent $5.00. Unfortunately it was difficult to attach to any of our countertops (curved edges) and when we tried to actually change the pasta thickness dial the machine started kafetching like crazy.

I have made my share of chinese style noodles and hand rolled them, but from now on this will be a lot more fun. Fresh herbs actually in the dough, hmmm. OK.
We also have a Vitamix (a milspec blender) and I plan on pureeing carrots or beets and use the puree in the pasta dough - problematic at first because you have to take out some equivalent amount of moisture or add more flour until you get the right consistency. I well remember this Sicilian place I worked at - we made our own fettucine and had a big roller machine setup (I mean BIG), nothing like you might imagine in looks. The dough we made was all semolina, some eggs, salt and water and they'd run it thru the rollers again and again and for a while it was a mess that looked like it would never roll out or come out as sheets - but sure as shooting it would. We sold it by the pound up front (an amazing $6.00 a pound in 1994). We'd run a special sometimes too where we'd have a squid ink fettucine on the menu and occasionally we'd sell a little to a valued customer (about $10.00 a pound). Black pasta - didn't look that great but with some bay scallops or mussels in garlic, white wine and chopped tomatoes was pretty sweet.

You know me I'll be trying all kinds of off the wall stuff. Will report in when I do. Spent the last day and a half baking and closing a deal on a great guitar.

 

[babettenj]

I have the kitchenaid roller/cutter attachment and LOVE it. Haven't made fresh pasta in a while- hmmm maybe this weekend. My standard recipe is one egg to one cup of flour, pinch salt, and 1/2 egg shell of water, maybe a squirt of olive oil if I feel like. I simply gather it together with cling film and rest and let hydrate in fridge, then use the roller attachment to knead the dough. Like you said it sometimes loioks a mess, but it always comes together. In my attempts to make a more tender pasta I use half AP and half cake flour. so I'm curious what the bread flour brings to the table.

 

[Sir Birdaholic]

You'll need LOTS of practice to get the pasta just right. Get busy, we're ALL comming for supper tomorrow!

Setting for 80,000?

 

[bigmike&nan]

In commercial bakeries there is bread flour and cake flour. For consumers flour manufacturers took bread flour and cake flour and mixed it and they called it ALL PURPOSE FLOUR.
Bread flour is less refined and has more gluten, whereas cake flour is very processed and has less gluten and is finer. It's really suited for things light, like cake.
So using bread flour would be more appropriate when making pasta because you want to work the gluten in the flour to get that famous "bite" or "to the tooth" resistance.

You work the gluten when kneading the dough (be it pasta dough or rolls) to get some snap.

 

[babettenj]

Actually my backgroung is in food (science and culinary) so I understand the whole gluten thing, but I was trying for a tender (but still with a little tooth) pasta noodle- think I might want a sturdier pasta for an extruded shape. They used a KA extruder attachment on Top Chef last night so now I want one of those $$$. Anywho, think I'm gonna play around and do some comparisons with different flour combos. My inspiration for noodle texture comes from Vic's restaurant in Bradley Beach (not far for you). Supposedly they make their own raviolli and those little cheese pillows just slide down your throat.