Today this ' Very Soft Polenta with Tiger Prawn Ragoût' is my last appearance in Sing Tao, East Week and HK Standard for this season. My next season with Sing Tao should start in April. I am excited about the next season, because this will be concentrated mainly on Chinese and South Asian cuisines and bread baking from Chef Karen (French Culinary Institute, New York). With the support and help of Maggie and members of my cooking club, the two Amys, Catherine, Pamela, Karen, Ada, Cheryl, Alison, Polly, May, foodies Jenny (from Toronto) and Jyoti (our affiliated member), I am able to reinvent and broaden my repertoire and take a giant step forward in this year of 2009. Thank you so so much, girls and I look foward to many many gatherings of cooking and fun together.
For this polenta dish, I am inspired by Mario Batali's take on a classic dish from the coastal villages outside of Trieste, the Northern Italian port city on the Adriatic famous for its fresh seafood. In this region, the polenta is served very soft, almost sauce-like. Mario Batali has a natural sense about food; not only is he a great chef, he is also a successful restauranteur, author, and regularly appears on TV food shows. I am his die-hard fan, and whenever I am in New York, I always dine at his various restaurants. My favourite is Casa Mono, where I love to sit at the bar and watch every detail of the cooking that is done right in front of me.
For this week, I will concentrate on pastas, because once you get into the whole zen of pasta, past the basics, turn your attention to the choice of ingredients for the sauce to match the type of pasta; when to use store-bought dried pasta and when to use hand-made ones, then the sky is your limit.
Pasta dishes have intrigued me for a long time, a few slices of the precious winter black truffles produce the most amazing pasta dish - still my number one favourite. It was Prof H K Ma who gave me the recipe after her walk in Italy. Thank you Prof Ma :-))
Another delicious pasta dish is using bread crumbs and garlic, a simple staple for the Italians, but so so good. Then you have the famous tomato and basil sauce from Naples, perfect to go with hand-made pasta (recipe published last week at Sing Tao). And pesto sauce in Genoa producing an exquisite flavour and texture for the pasta. Wel,l the list goes on, but first of all, let's talk about Spaghetti Carbonara - a very simple dish, yet so difficult to achieve perfection.
Recently I was told that a food writer criticized me in his/her column that I do not understand cooking, that all I do is to make a very simple dish exceedingly complicated. Well, here I go again, making a simple dish very complicated ......hehehe!
The holidays are almost over, but work for me starts at the weekend whilst my articles continue to appear in Sing Tao. For tomorrow, it will be 'Handmade Pasta', but this was made with the aid of a machine. Here, I will show you how to make the dough by hand. This is far easier than making bread, because to achieve an elastic texture, you need to knead the dough to death.
The recipe given by Chef Alberto of H One at IFC is as follows:
500g "00" Italian Flour, 4 Italian eggs, 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 50g semolina flour and 1 small cup of water
But there are many variations to the above recipe. The texture of the pasta is determined by the kind of flour used and the ratio of egg white to yolk or of egg to water. You can also mix and match your flour, for example, if rye flour is added, it produces pasta that retains a slight chewiness when cooked.
Different kinds of flour also produce different textures. For example, the most commonly used flour is the Italian 00, it has slightly more gluten than all-purpose flour. Hence if you make pasta using all-purpose flour, it produces softer pastas.
I prefer pasta that has a bite, so my preferred mix of flour would be bread flour + rye flour. You have to bear in mind freshly made pasta does not have that chewy, al dente texture. Fresh pasta tends to be quite soft even if you have air dried the pasta; the texture will improve, but it is never the same as the commercial dried pasta. If you look to match the texture of freshly made pasta to that of commercial dried pasta, then my advice is - forget it - 'cause you will be disappointed.
Basics (8)
