Aquafaba (vegan) Black Pepper Pasta

We broadened our pasta horizons this week. I’ve been reading about aquafaba for a while, and hoping to put it to good use. This weekend Sarah made a batch of channa masala and she started with dried chickpeas. I asked to to reserve the liquid from the cooking process this past weekend in our Instant Pot.

First, I strained the liquid into a medium saucepan. I didn’t want any discernible floaty bits.

Second, I simmered it in a medium saucepan about 8 minutes over medium heat, to reduce it by half. The result from Sarah’s bean batch and the strained and simmered reduction was just over 240 g (a little more than a cup) of aqufaba. I put that into the fridge for a couple days until ready to experiment with it.

Last night, I set to work following this recipe for the ingredients and using our experiences with homemade egg pasta as a guide for method and resulting dough texture.

It worked! I liked the black pepper flavor embedded in the pasta. The raw dough didn’t taste the same as egg noodles we’ve made in the past, but rather more like the usual dried pasta — just in soft form. I would definitely make these again when there is another batch of aquafaba to be used up. Like all fresh pasta varieties, these cook fast and are less sturdy than store-bought dried pasta — so I don’t expect they would hold up to the vigorous mixing required for a dish like cacio e pepe (for example). But I bet they would work great in all other typical pasta applications.

Aquafaba (vegan) Black Pepper Pasta

Adapted from Egg-Free, Vegan Homemade Black Pepper Pasta for use with our equipment. The original method calls for a food processor with a spinning blade to form a ball. That method worked great for us making dumpling dough back when we had such a machine. For this recipe, we used a stand mixer with a paddle, dough kneading hook, and pasta rolling and cutting attachments.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups (250 g) all purpose flour -OR- 00 flour
  • 1/2 cup (120 g) reduced aquafaba
  • 1 tsp (3 g) sea salt
  • 1 tbsp (15 g) extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tsp (2 g) freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Mix together the dry ingredients (Tipo 00 is what we used) with the paddle on a stand mixer.

  2. Dump in the wet ingredients and continue mixing a bit more until well combined.

  3. Switch to the dough hook and knead until the dough starts to climb the walls of the mixing bowl and fall back in on itself. Interrupt the kneading and help it if necessary. All of this took no more than a few minutes of kneading time. We did not have to adjust the flour or liquid at all to get the text we needed it. Squish the dough together into a ball shape.

  4. Let the dough rest in a ball, covered tightly, for 30 minutes. We put a silicone lid over the mixing bowl and let it rest inside that (rather than use plastic wrap).

  5. Cut the dough ball into three or four pieces. One at a time, flatten them and run them through the pasta roller, doing the usual lather/rinse/repeat of folding the ends in and re-rolling at the widest setting at least three times before rolling progressively thinner. Our tagliatelle came out great on the #5 setting.

  6. Cut the flat sheets into noodles, dust them with flour and let them rest in nests while you prepare to boil them. They will finish quickly.

Cacio e Pepe (without Za’atar)

I finally made a cacio e pepe I am proud of! I’d tried several times each with a different approach and it was always a failure (clumpy, oily, gummy, whatever). Then I found a WaPo recipe for a za’atar variation, tried it, had much better results, and stole the technique. It’s the best cacio e pepe method I have found so far, so I’m sticking to it for next time.

Pro tips from last-night-me to next-time-me:

  • you gotta microplane that cheese as finely as possible
  • pecorino grates more easily than grana padano (which I subbed for the parm
    this time) or parmigiano
  • our cheapo IKEA stainless steel skillet was fine for boiling the pasta, but with so little water (to encourage the starchiness) it really can stick if you’re not careful
  • our 12″ cast iron skillet was a champ for everything else
  • the proportions below are scaled down by 50% from the original; that was plenty for two adults as a primo along with some roasted brussels sprouts — steamed broccoli would be a good choice next time, too

adapted from this WaPo recipe

Ingredients

  • 3.5 cups (800 ml) water
  • 3/8 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more for finishing to taste
  • 1/2 pound (225 g) dried bucatini (or other long pasta, cooking time adjusted if necessary)
  • 2 tablespoons (25 g) unsalted butter
  • 1.5 teaspoons freshly cracked black pepper
  • 2 ounces (60 g) Parmesan cheese, very finely grated
  • 1/2 ounce (15 g) pecorino Romano cheese, very finely grated

Directions

In a deep, wide skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, bring the water to a boil, then stir in the salt. Cook the bucatini in that for 9 minutes (or per package instructions) until al dente, stirring every now and then so they don’t stick together or to the bottom of the pan, and to ensure they are submerged. Add hot water if necessary to keep the pasta just-barely covered. Drain, reserving all the cooking water. (You should have about 1 1/8 cups (265 ml) water; if not, add enough hot water until you do.)

In a large, high-sided, nonstick saute pan over high heat, cook the butter until bubbling, then stir the pepper and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Pour in the reserved cooking water (carefully, watch for steam bursts), bring to a rapid boil and cook until silky and slightly reduced, about 5 minutes. Toss in the pasta and stir vigorously into the sauce. Add the Parmesan in two batches, continuing to stir vigorously as you go and waiting until the first half has melted before adding the next. Once all the Parmesan has melted, add the pecorino, continuing to stir, until it has also melted and the sauce is smooth and silky.

Serve hot.

November Impressions

Back in June I had to define all my vacation plans for the rest of the year. Despite Corona foiling our plans at a road trip into various near-by countries, we managed to explore some parts of Germany new to us. But that was only about half of my vacation contingent; in November I had to take more. We stuck around Regensburg, watching the infection numbers rise to our dismay.

I took a few pictures: Continue reading November Impressions

PSA: “Siemens SIWAMAT xlm 147f family” beeping

I had a heckuva time getting this question answered on my own; here’s hoping this post is useful to future owners of the same product.

Our Siemens washing machine started beeping at the end of every cycle. As far as we know, it never did that before a few weeks ago (and we’ve had this machine for 16 years at this point). Continue reading PSA: “Siemens SIWAMAT xlm 147f family” beeping

Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 3: Schwarzwald

After a four-hour drive down Germany’s western border with France and a hop through the Schwarzwald towards Bonndorf…im Schwarzwald, we arrived at the final Ferienwohnung destination for this trip. The arrival was not without its complications, however; TWO of the little towns off through which we were supposed to drive on the last leg of the drive were closed to through traffic, causing us to scramble and miss our predicted arrival time by an hour. Fortunately, we kept the landlady in the loop and she was accommodating. Ha. Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 3: Schwarzwald

Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 2: Rheingau

We were originally going to head from Freinsheim across the South of France towards its Atlantic coast, but…Covid-19 happened.

Most of our winey traveller activities in Germany have been along the Weinstraße but there are lots more spots to visit for a tipple. Like the whole Rheingau. So, with a lot of the travel demand reduced in general and all regions of Germany back to school (whether in classroom settings or otherwise), the selection of Ferienwohnungen on short notice when all the relevant regions of France hit the Risikogebiet list was surprisingly rich. We picked out a Ferienwohnung in a former nuns’ home directly on the banks of the Rhine in Lorchhausen. Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 2: Rheingau

Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 1: Freinsheim, Bad Dürkheim, and Wiesbaden

The annual Kulinarische Weinwanderung in Freinsheim didn’t happen this year (but you can relive its glory through our write-ups here, here, here, here, and here if you like).

See full screen

Corona squashed the big event in the town, but that didn’t completely shut down everything, so we went anyways. Couple reasons for that: Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 1: Freinsheim, Bad Dürkheim, and Wiesbaden