Homemade fettuccine with sweet pork rib sauce

First the dough. Two bags of flour, one for bread the other semolina. One egg broken into a shallow bowl. No water. No salt. No oil. Just egg and flour. Flour mixed into egg one tablespoon at a time from both packages of flour so they stay fairly even 50%-50% without being scientific about it. The flours cut into the egg with a knife. Finally resorting to using hands and the hands feeling the dough is too wet. This goes on until the dough is fairly dry. Kneed all the flour in, seems too dry, then add scant more flour from both. The dough will seem far too dry to roll. Wrap in cellophane and wait. 

The more you wait the more destroyed your dampened flour becomes. The water molecules in the egg even themselves throughout the dough wad. They naturally separate themselves electromagnetically. Enzymes within the flour are released by egg-moisture and they begin their unlocking function. Two thousand unlocks per second. And there are millions of them. The dough softens considerably in fifteen minutes. Now the dough will be too wet to roll. Flour is added to the flattened dough to keep it from sticking to the Atlas rollers. This flour gets smashed into the noodles as they are flattened. The more you do this obviously the more flour-laden your pasta becomes and the more surface flour available in the cooking water to make a veritable paste. Thin paste, but still, this boiling water is used to thicken the sauce in another pot. 

        Ew, goodness, you’re clever. Why no photographs? 

I did already a million times. Anyway, the dough making goes here.

It is not an established thing. It does not have a name. All that I know is that it is freaking delicious. 

Oddly I have tons of cheese of different types and none of that sounds good right now. How can this pasta dish be delicious without cheese? It is a mystery.

This came up tonight because I have a second Atlas machine in its exterior mailing box with my address on it. 

It is for the boyfriend of my housekeeper whom I do not know.

She is forbidden to accept gifts. So I am doing this the Chinese way. Run the bribe through a relative as they did with Hunter, 10% to Joe off the top. As they do throughout. The thing is, She will be carrier. She will gladly accept a gift for a friend but not for herself.

And she will benefit from at least one meal of homemade pasta I expect. While I do not necessarily expect their relationship to endure. She talks about him. He accepted the machine that cuts potatoes to fries. The dude likes to cook. But they could be breaking up right now for all that I know. 

Jesus told me to do it. I am going with that. 

It is a good Atlas too. The best. With two of the most used cutters. Paid double what I paid for mine, exact same thing, fifteen years ago and it is still worth it. Double it again, still worth it. Still the best.  You should buy one. I am giving him one of the bags of semolina too because I doubt he even knows about that. None of the recipes mention it. None of them do. And that mystifies me greatly as it seems so basic. Fun da mental. Look at your package of spaghetti. It will say 100% duram wheat. This is only 50% duram wheat.  However this turns out it is a very good gift. From hereon whatever happens with this, I don't care. 

Carrot cake

I thought this was one pound but it is two pounds and that means I only need to grate half of this bag.

Pork ribs, broccoli, corn

There is a cup of liquid portion that is delightfully flavorful but too oily. I can fix that. I wanted something like BBQ sauce that is not tomato-based. So I used a few favorite spices and a few from the Asian seven magical flavor ingredients. I think that nearly anything I do comes out great so long as I keep thinking about balance. I don't own any spices that I don't like. I do like sweetness so I up that a little. 

Miso soup with crab dashi, spinach, Napa cabbage, onion

Laziness determined the fate of this miso. The good thing is that works very well. 

Toasted pumpkin bread and vanilla ice cream

 

Care to see it frying? 

Then God blessed the pumpkin bread slice and bathed it in celestial light. 

With a 100W light bulb and a shiny steel pan. 

Pumpkin bread, two fried eggs and ham

Baked cauliflower, roasted chicken with pineapple

Potato, fried wedges

Cheese omelet, bib lettuce

* Moderate low heat. 

* Pan heavily buttered.

* Pour the beaten egg over browned butter and shake it all about. Shake it left and right, shake it back and forth, shake it sideways, shake it front to back. Pick up the pan and roll it all around. Take two steps backwards and one step forwards. Put your index finger on the middle of your scalp and turn yourself around in a circle like a ballerina. Redistribute the egg until the surface is nearly cooked.

Nearly cooked.

Not raw. 

Not fully cooked.

Get the pan off the heat and sprinkle on the cheese. That robs a bit of heat. To melt. Fold or roll up. Roll out of the pan and onto a plate. 

Salt roasted whole chicken with pineapple, berries

Durum wheat pasta with garlic, butter and shrimp, strawberries

Pork egg rolls with homemade wrappers

1.5 Cups sifted bread flour

1 Cup aprox. nearly boiling water

1 Teaspoon baking soda

The dough is like stiff rubber.

Rolled to the thinnest setting. 

I learned to keep the dough covered with corn starch. Three times during rolling 

There are actually 4 rows of 6. I don't know what happened to the framing.

The homemade wrappers are softer than store-bought. Surprisingly tough. 

Fried rice

Lie. 

We artist types cannot help ourselves. There is twice this much jalapeño, four times this much Napa cabbage, half again as much pineapple, and three times this much sliced sandwich ham.

Next time I won't lie like this. I'll spill it all out in front of its pocket. So the egg carton measuring cup thing is ensconced in its own overages. The whole thing will defeat whatever purpose there was in putting the things in an egg carton, but that's another thing about us artist types, we like art. 

        "The egg carton thing is not really art." 

Shut up. I meant to say, please stop saying hurtful things. 

Tonight was a process of elimination. I have a tin of bamboo shoots but when I opened it they were the wrong shade of tan so the whole tin was tossed.  Zucchini was tossed. Mushrooms were tossed. Water chestnuts were eliminated but not tossed. Chives, fresh rosemary, fresh basil and fresh cilantro were all tossed. Carrots tossed.

* soy sauce

* mirin

* rice vinegar

* teeny-tiny bit of toasted sesame seed oil.

We were not allowed to tell each other to shut up. Can you imagine it? Five kids telling each other to shut up. 

Well, what are we supposed to say?

We were supposed to say, "Please stop talking." 

It was useless. We said "Please stop talking" so acidly no translation is necessary to, "stfu." And that really was a lot worse than simple shut up. 

Did I tell you this already? Sueko taught me this. My version was chopped up hotdogs and catsup. And that was fine with Sueko. 

Apple, corn, radish, pineapple, salmon and rice

The rice doesn't have any vinegar or sugar and the salmon does not have any wasabi or soy sauce. 

Plate: fruit, berries, vegetables, nuts, cheese, ham

I totally cooked this.  Zapped. Twenty seconds for pecans and fifteen seconds for asparagus.