Flour and Water

Where to start? It's been a long day and as I watch the Oscars my back throbs slightly from over-exertion in exercise and chores. We've been busy every weekend for the last month so the plan-less weekend was a welcome respite. Did I take it easy and recharge? The answer is no. Amidst the errands, groceries, trip to medical lab for glucose test for Shelese, chopping, prepping, and cooking... I'm tired! As I reflect on my weekend activities I realize my fatigue and long for another day to the weekend. Despite sore muscles and heavy eyelids I find myself in a culinary whirlwind on this crisp and sunny Sunday; not because I have to but because I love to. About a month ago I ordered Ideas in Food, which explains why their recipes taste as good as they do. I'm on the chapter that celebrates the result of mixing flour and water. Let's all bow our heads in a moment of appreciation of the glory which is ground wheat and water. Seriously! How many people across the world subsist on a simple mixture of flour and water and other ingredients? I'd venture to say without researching it that most of us do. Let us also appreciate this simple fact: few things are as soul satisfying as eating fresh-baked anything. Fueled by the aforementioned literature and the items in our fridge that needed to be consumed, I got to work. We had smoked gouda and English Cheddar that would spoil soon, fresh organic baby artichokes from this weeks Abundant Harvest box, and recently roasted roma tomatoes and thyme. We had about eight baby artichokes so I cleaned them and soaked them in lemon ice water.

I mixed together a simple flatbread from Ideas in Food and started them rising and resting. There is nothing more than flour, water, olive oil, and salt in the dough.

After ample rising the dough was rolled out and stuffed with shredded gouda and cheddar. Placed on lightly oiled parchment on the underside of a baking sheet and baked about 15 minutes at 500 degrees. The flatbread was brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with coarse sea salt and pepper.

Started to saute the artichokes in olive oil until browned slightly and added in shallots, garlic, and onion. Once the aromatics softened I threw in the slow roasted tomatoes I made yesterday. Splash of vermouth, reduced, then added water and S & P.

Homemade pappardelle made with many egg yolks is always the way to go when you're eating fresh and simple ingredients. I would get into the details of how I made the noodles but I'm simply being lazy. The recipe came from the same Ideas in Food book. One thing I would do differently is to go a little thinner. I think I took half of them to one notch thinner on the noodle roller. Some where so silky and practically melted in our mouths; the other, well, they where different... but not much.

The noodle only saw boiling water for about two minutes before being added to the sauce with about a half cup of the noodle cooking water and sauted for about three minutes.

We started with a simple salad with onion, dried cranberries, feta, topped with S & P, a nice olive oil, and aged thick Modena vinegar.