Our project this month was chosen by Sara at Sassy Suppers and was in Oct Living – Orecchiette. I remember when the magazine came I paged past this and thought “yeah, right.” Then it was chosen as our project. And, as I posted last week, I learned I am gluten intolerant. I almost didn’t make it, but I decided that I really have to be brave when it comes to gluten-free substitutions, so I went for it. The recipe is really basic. It uses semolina flour, all purpose flour, salt and water. I thought long and hard about this and poked around on the internet to see how to make GF pasta at home. So I ended up substituting Bob’s Red Mill GF flour for the semolina. It’s a really yellow flour and has things like chickpea flour in it. I used Cup4Cup GF flour for the AP flour and I added an egg to the recipe to hold it all together (and reduced the water to compensate). It worked!

I made half a batch and had no problems working with the dough at all. I made this on a Sunday morning. I was so sure it would be a disaster, I didn’t save the pasta for dinner and had about half of it myself for lunch. I made a simple preparation to dress it: I cooked one piece of chopped bacon. I removed the cooked bacon and added one chopped scallion, salt and pepper, 1 tbsp olive oil, and 1/4 cup peas to it. I had some leftover cooked winter squash, so I scooped out a couple of tablespoons of that and mixed it in. I tossed it with the pasta and added Parmesan cheese. It was really, really, really good!

I have made fresh pasta myself only once (see Pici of You Know Whatti) and it was a total disaster. This was easy and I can actually see making it again in the future!

December’s project was chosen by Pru and is Golden Pear Cream Puffs.

Our project this month was chosen by Sara at Sassy Suppers and was in Oct Living – Orecchiette. I remember when the magazine came I paged past this and thought “yeah, right.” Then it was chosen as our project. And, as I posted last week, I learned I am gluten intolerant. I almost didn’t make … Read more →