Lamb with pappardelle

Mushrooms are added to the lamb stew from yesterday and the potatoes picked out and eaten separately, because what, you think I am crazy over here with double starches? No SRSLY, I thought it would photograph better. 

Pappare means to gobble up, a word that captures the fun of exuberant consumption much better than inghiotitre, therefore pappardelle rather than inghiotitrdelle. This concludes the etymology lesson for the day. 

The Atlas machine will roll out the pasta to the perfect thickness and it has an attachment that will cut pappardelle to perfect ideal width while simultaneiously imparting a fluted edge, and it is fun, but not as fun as rolling out the dough by hand and cutting imperfect widths. 

I saved the surplus flour from yesterday that coated the lamb chunks. The flour is heavily seasoned with salt/pepper/and fennel. So that flour was used here for the pappardelle along with 50% hard wheat semolina flour. Rolled thickly, this pappardelle is very flavorful and very sturdy. The two flour types are added to blended egg and water by the tablespoonful. Two tablespoons seasoned flour, then two tablespoons semolina, back and forth until a dough is formed, which turned out to be six tablespoons each, a little bit heavier on the semolina than the seasoned flour because right at that point I ran out of seasoned flour and didn't feel like dragging out a bag of all purpose flour just for a 1/2 tablespoon. I am lazy and careless that way. For that same reason it was semolina that dusted the work surface and the rolling pin. 

pasta dough:

*  1 jumbo egg or regular egg if that is what you have

*  1/2 egg shell of water (egg shell used as a demitasse) 

*  6 tablespoons all purpose flour

*  6 tablespoons semolina flour

The dough rests for 20 minutes. During this period of restful quiescence the wet flour undergoes autolysis, which is the destruction of a part of the cell or membrane by it own enzymes. So it turns out the rest period is quite dynamic and it is a step that is not to be skipped. You will notice the dough is much easier to knead or to roll out and tends to stay put when stretched. We dough-master types call that relaxed, relaxed from having rested.  

Charmingly irregular innit ↓.

Have you ever got a mouthful of seawater? That is how salty your pasta water should be.