How To Roast A Chicken

Ok, You may be thinking "who roasts a chicken anymore?". I know its super convenient to just buy the bags or packages of parts and just cook those up, but I believe we should bring back the bird.  Seriously, why do we only roast whole birds once a year at thanksgiving? And we even do that poorly most of the time! Bird roasting is a long lost art that very few people dare to do. I've heard one too many people say recently that they have NEVER roasted a whole chicken and I decided I want to do something about that.  I always tell my students that a sign of a good chef is knowing how to do the simple things well.  I take advantage of the fact that I do this frequently and forget this is not a normal activity for normal people.  So here you go: Bird roasting 101.  I did a chicken, but you can do whatever bird you want... like a turkey... no, its not against the law to cook one outside of the holiday season.

First step to a beautiful roasted bird...... Brine it! 

Letting poultry spend some time in a brine is a magical thing. A brine is just a salty bath for the bird. As it soaks in the brine the salt pulls out the moisture then it all gets absorbed back in: Moisture, salt, and other brine flavorings.  And when it's roasting, less moisture is pulled out because the salt helps to lock it in the meat. Salt doesn't evaporate like water does. Not only will you have the moistest bird ever, but even the leftovers will be moist and the meat will be seasoned and flavored from the inside out instead of just on the skin of the bird.  See, magical! You have a lot of options on the brine.  You can just use salt and water, but I like to use juices and wines in my brine's so there is more flavor. You can do orange, cranberry, or apricot juice, white wine, stock.... pretty much anything you want as long as it is a liquid.  If you do juice or wine, do 1/2 juice 1/2 water to dilute it a little.  It will be a very expensive brine plus the flavor might be slightly too intense if you don't.  You always want to taste the flavor of the bird, don't cover that up with other flavors and spices.  You can also just google "poultry brine's" and find some good suggestions on some combinations and measurements.  For my 4 1/2 pound chicken, I used 15 cups of liquid to 1 cup of salt. Then I just added in some spices I had laying around : black peppercorns, parsley stems, herbs de province, garlic, and lemon juice.  Just dissolve the salt into the liquid then pour it over your bird in a pot or bowl.  You can dissolve the salt by stirring it in, or you may need to warm it slightly.  Just make sure its cool before you pour it over the bird.  Pop the whole pot in the fridge to keep it cool and let it go a minimum of 3-4 hours or up to overnight {12 hours or so}

When you're ready to cook it, pull the bird out of the brine, rinse it slightly and pat it dry with paper towels.  Now its time for some real fun. 

I bought this chicken at whole foods.  I've been researching free range and organic chickens a lot lately and came across Mary's Chickens.  Mary's is a family farm and they provide a great product. No over-crowded chicken houses with un-naturally fat, sickly chickens stumbling around.  I'm very impressed with their handling of their birds.  Plus, while I was checking out this company I realized that I know the son which makes me want to support this farm even more.  Anyways, whole foods distributes their chickens and even for whole foods I thought the price was amazing for the quality of the product.  I just got the free range chicken {$1.99 a pound} but they also do free range organic {$3.99 a pound} and pasture raised {don't remember the exact price. I think it was about $6 or so a pound}  I just chose to get the free-range only because even though its not labeled organic... they're being fed the same and raised the same so I was fine with it.  Whole foods sells these packaged or you can buy them un-packaged from the meat case. 

I really want to reinforce something I have already said..... When you start with a good quality product before cooking, you end up with a good quality product after cooking.  This chicken was amazing.  I've always noticed with the bags of chicken breasts that I buy from Costco, they always have this weird super chicken-y almost sour flavor to it.  Its hard to describe, so hopefully you know what I'm talking about. Its not good.  This chicken tasted like chicken. I loved it! And it had a really good texture to it also.  So worth it.  Really, if you buy 1 chicken, that will feed 2 people at least 2-3 meals.  Plus you can make stock with the bones.  Not too shabby for 9 bucks.

Second step: Prep the bird for roasting. 

Really, if you want to keep it simple, all that needs to be done with the bird at this point is to rub the skin with a little bit of olive oil or melted butter and its ready for the oven. The oil will help the skin get nice and crispy and golden brown because oil helps to conduct heat to the bird. I like things more than simple sometimes though.  I like to cram compound butter under the skin!! Compound butter is a flavored butter.  You can mix in whatever you want in a compound butter.  They are amazing to just have on hand because they make a great finishing touch to a lot of different things.  I used 1 stick of softened {room temperature} butter and added minced parsley, lemon pepper, and garlic.  Add as much as you want of these things, there isn't an exact recipe for this. 

If you gently loosen the skin with your fingers first, you can take finger-fulls of this and push it under the skin and just massage it into all the nooks and crannies of the bird.  Sorry, I don't have any pictures of this but I was home alone and couldn't touch my camera with my butter covered chicken infested hands. But here is the finished product:

You may have notice my Ghetto-rigged trussing job.  I didn't have any butcher's twine to truss my bird.  Trussing is where you tie the legs and arms into the bird to keep it compact and prevents it from flailing everywhere while its cooking.  Its nice, but not 100% necessary, but still.... I couldn't handle the legs just dangling there in the pan.  That would be sad.  So instead I took a piece of foil and rolled it into a snake and wrapped that around the legs then tucked the wings under the body where the head used to be. Good enough right?  OH.... and put some fresh rosemary in the caboose if you have any growing in your yard. Aromatics make a difference!

Final step: Roasting

First let me address temperatures.  You will probably find a million different temperatures to roast a bird at.  Most recipes say 325-350 degrees. I prefer to go a little higher at 375-400 degrees.  The reason I like the higher temperature is I feel it gets better color on the bird and it cooks faster which means less time exposed to heat where it can dry out.  One thing you should not do is low temperature roasting {250-300 degrees}  Let me tell you something......{say that like fire marshal bill}... Chickens and turkeys are not your grandma's chickens and turkey's anymore.  Grandma did a low temp roast and let it cook all day because she ate birds that were running around her backyard.  Those birds had a really nice fat layer between the skin and meat which protected it from drying out.  The fat would melt and self-baste itself and be all nice and delicious with very little external help.  That doesn't happen anymore... so up the temp and just cook it.  If you low temperature roast today's birds, they will end up dry because of the long heat exposure. 

Put the bird in a preheated oven and LEAVE IT ALONE! Do not open the oven to baste it.... it doesn't need it.  Especially if you crammed it full of butter.  Without getting all Bill Nye on you again, basting really doesn't do anything to your bird but sogg out the skin and helps to encouraging drying. Its not necessary.  My 4 1/2 bird took about 1 hour and 15 minutes uncovered at 375 and looked like this when it was done:

I forgot to turn the pan 1/2 way through.... turn yours.  In a conventional oven with all those hot spots you'll get a more even browning on the bird if it gets a little turn. 

How do you know when its done??  BUY A PROBE THERMOMETER!!  This is a must have if you like to roast anything.  

These are wonderful because you can stick it in whatever you are roasting and leave it in.  The oven door closes on the wire and you can monitor the temperature the entire way through and will always know the exact temp the food is at.  You can even program it to beep when it hits a certain temperature.  I also love it because it goes to a high enough temperature so you can use it for cooking sugar too!  

Remove the bird from the oven once it reaches 160 degrees.  Let it rest for about 10-15 minutes and carryover cooking will take it up to the approved finished temp of 165.  Now its ready for carving and serving! 

I hope this inspires you all to tackle the easy task of roasting a whole bird.  I promise you will not regret trying this.

Angel Hair Pasta

Here's a super easy pasta dish that I actually used to make when I worked a certain restaurant in town {I won't say which because then everyone will want the recipe for a certain popular dish there aka sweet potato fries with jalapeno arugula aioli} OK...so I'll probably post that at some point, I'm just boycotting it right now because I have to make/explain that one for so many people.  Anyways, this is a vegetarian dish, but you can easily just add some grilled chicken on top if you need some carnage.  

Angel hair {cappellini} pasta is one of the easiest/hardest pastas to cook.  Its very thin so even though I used dried it still cooks in just a couple minutes. Because it cooks so fast, this is where it gets hard. Its VERY easy to overcook. It goes from perfect al dente to mush in seconds. I prefer to actually cook this less then you think just to make sure its not over done. Basically keep your eye on it and don't walk away from the stove while its cooking and taste it frequently to check the doneness.  I don't really measure when I'm just winging it {not following a recipe} so I can only give guesstimates on amounts here. Basically you have to have a little bit of your own judgement here and add as much as you want of the ingredients.

Also, this recipe calls for Extra Virgin Olive Oil as the sauce.  Pasta cuts are designed for certain sauces. Fettuccine was made to go with Alfredo.  Spaghetti appropriately pairs with spaghetti sauce{hmmm}, and mac or shell noddles begged at creation to be baked in cheese sauce. Because angel hair pasta is so thin, it is commonly just warmed with olive oil because everything else is too heavy for it and would make it just stick and clump.  Speaking of olive oil...... there are different quality levels.  Extra virgin is the first press of the olives and has the cleanest, purest flavor.  It also should not be cooked very much. You'll notice when you read the recipe it says to keep the heat moderately low.  Olive oil burns faster and at a lower temperature than butter. When you go through the grades of extra virgin to virgin to olive oil to pomace oil, that just means the olives have gone through additional pressing and have impurities from the olives in the oil.  All the varieties below virgin will tend to have bitter or sour flavors and are not good for saucing pasta. However, the lower grade olive oils can be cooked with because they don't burn as fast and are cheaper.  Heat breaks down the flavors, you are paying bigger bucks for that flavor in extra virgin, so completely ignoring the whole burning thing, you'll kill the flavor on the good stuff.  Extra virgin is like wine. Every brand will have a slightly different flavor with varying undertones.  Use a good quality one, but you don't have to get one of those crazy bajillion dollar priced ones you can find at the boutique stores.  I picked up some oil at Trader Joe's and it was only $7 for a liter.  It was just fine.  Just make sure what ever bottle you pick up is imported from Italy and is 100% pure extra virgin olive oil.  Just like wine... you get what you pay for sometimes. 

1/2 pound angel hair pasta

1 pound container grape or cherry tomatoes {I used heirlooms.....these are the best!}

4-5 cloves minced garlic

handful of basil cut chiffonade {see explanation below}

3/4-1 C. Extra virgin olive oil

Toasted Pine Nuts 

{optional if you can find them for less then $20 per pound...they are ridiculous right now!}

Goat Cheese as needed {about 4 oz}

This recipe made enough for 2 entree portions and 2 lunch portions.

FYI.......Prep everything before you start cooking! Everything needs to be ready to go because seriously the pasta will be done in 2-3 minutes and the sauce only takes that long also.

Step 1:

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil for the pasta and if using pine nuts toast them in a 350 degree oven until slightly golden brown.

Step 2:

While waiting for the water to boil, cut the cherry tomatoes in half and mince the garlic.

Step 3:

Chiffonade the basil.  Remove just the leaves from the stems and stack a small pile on a cutting board

Thinly shred the leaves with a sharp knife. {the thinner the better}

 You are officially prepped! {in the industry you would say you are all mise en placed out.... Mise en place means everything in its place}

Step 4:

Warm a saute pan on moderate-low heat. You can now go ahead and add the pasta to the boiling water pot.  Stir frequently so they don't clump or stick.  Add the extra virgin olive oil to the saute pan and let that warm slightly.  Add the tomatoes to the pan.  Season them with a little kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper.

 Cook until the seeds start to burst from the tomatoes and they wrinkle a little

Finally add the garlic and let it cook slightly until softened. Turn off the heat.  By this time the pasta should already be cooked and drained. Add the pasta and basil {and pine nuts} to the pan and toss it all together with a pair of tongs.

Plate and top with however much goat cheese you feel is necessary.  I love goat cheese so I'm usually pretty heavy handed with it....just do what you like.

Ta Da!! Dinner in 15 minutes.... suck on that one Rachel. Finished product:

Crepes With Chicken & Morels

Thomas Keller Bouchon Cookbook Pages 198 & 199
Serves 4, 2 crepes each

This past week was a crazy week for me, so I was only able to get one recipe made, and I had to pick an easy and fast one to boot. But I did do 3 recipes the week prior, so technically I am right on schedule of 2 recipes per week. I think this works out though. Who doesn't like quick and easy? I chose to do savory crepes for a lot of reasons. Most people don't think dinner time when they think of crepes. Its usually associated with cheese filling with fruit for dessert. Crepes are cool because the fillings you can choose for them are limitless. The batter will be a little different for dessert vs. savory but technique is the same. Crepes are just unleavened, thin French pancakes. Unleavened just means there's nothing in it that will make it rise like yeast or baking soda or powder. Once filled, they can be shaped several ways. You can just do a 4 fold (fold in 1/2 then 1/2 again) so you end up with a triangle shape, or you can just fold in 1/2 once like a flat taco, or rolled to make a cylinder. I think the 4 fold looks best. The folding method used here is one I haven't seen before.  You just fold the 4 sides toward the center which leaves a little of the filling exposed so you can see it. I kind of like this method.


I think from start to finish this only took like 1 1/2 hours. I know its no 30 minute meal, but for a fancy meal,    1 1/2 hours is nothing.  Plus, anything that you-know-who (eeeeewwww) makes in 30 minutes is usually nasty and looks like garbage in a saute pan. Anyways..... here we go!

Step 1: Make the crepe batter

1 c. All purpose flour
1/4 tsp. Kosher salt
1/8 tsp. Fresh Ground pepper
4 Eggs
3/4 c. Milk
3/4 c. Heavy cream
----------------------------------
3 Tbs. Unsalted butter, melted
2 Tbs. Miced chives

The batter needs to be made first because it needs time to rest before using it, at least 30 minutes, no longer then a day. If you let it sit longer then that it will separate and get kind of weird.
All you do is combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and just pour in your eggs, milk, and cream and whisk until smooth. Do not add the butter yet. It should be about the consistency of buttermilk. Remember, these are not pancakes, the batter does not need to be that thick. {see picture 1} It needs to be pourable without being watery.
After the batter has rested, you need to strain it because it will be kind of lumpy. {see picture 2 & 3} Picture 3 really shows why it needs to be strained. I have a chinois (pronounced shin-wah), which I totally could not live without. If you like making sauces, this is a must have. However they are really expensive {about $100. Thanks mom for the best b-day present ever!!}. The mesh is ridiculously fine on this so it gets every single lump out and makes the sauce super smooth. If you don't have a birthday coming up or just don't want to make this kind of splurge.... its ok to use one of those regular hand strainers.  It just won't be as pretty as what a chinois can do. Now you can whisk in your melted butter and chopped chives. Speaking of butter..... please only buy unsalted. Regular butter has salt already added because home cooks don't salt things. If a recipe calls for unsalted you must use unsalted. If you don't have it, just reduce or eliminate the salt called for in the recipe.

Step 2: Make the sauce & filling

You should make this while your batter is resting to speed things along.

Sauce:

1/2 recipe of Mornay sauce {see recipe below}

2 c. Cooked chicken*

2 Tbs. Mined tarragon

Heavy cream as needed for thinning

------------------------------------------------------

Filling:

4 Tbs. Unsalted butter

5 ounces {about 3 c.} morels or other mushrooms

12 oz. shelled beans {recipe called for fava, had to sub though. I used edemame, but you can use lima also. Also, I got stuck using frozen. couldn't find any fresh}

*You need 2 c. of shredded cooked chicken for the filling. If you have leftover chicken from a whole roasting chicken you can use that, otherwise, you need to cook some chicken. I just used 2 medium sized chicken breasts and drizzled them with olive oil, chopped herbs (whatever you have), and salt and pepper. Just bake in the oven at 350 degrees until they are cooked though. Let them cool slightly then chop it up! They don't need to be chopped perfectly, they're just getting mixed into a sauce.

This recipe uses a Mornay sauce, which is just a roux (pronounced roo) thickened cheese sauce. What's a roux you ask?  Its equal parts fat and flour used to thicken things. You've probably made one a million times without realizing it. 

Mornay Sauce (Bouchon Cookbook pg. 316)

3 Tbs. Unsalted butter

1/2 c. White or yellow onion, small dice

3 Tbs. All purpose flour

2 c. Milk

1 c. Heavy cream

1 bay leaf

3 whole cloves

1/3 c. Grated emmentaler cheese

Kosher salt and ground pepper to taste

{I only made 1/2 a recipe of this for the crepes and it was plenty}

Melt the butter in a sauce pot over moderate heat. Add onion and saute until just softened and translucent. Add the flour all at once and let it cook for about a minute while stirring constantly.  Slowly stir in the milk and cream. Then add the spices. Let simmer on low heat until thick, but will still pour from a spoon like pictured below. {This took about 20 minutes} Strain, then stir in the cheese over low heat so it melts and season to taste with salt and pepper. BTW.... you may not know what Emmentaler cheese is. It just a type of swiss cheese, but its a little firmer than regular sandwich swiss, and its flavor is more developed. I found mine at Trader Joe's for $4.80 for an 8 oz block, which is plenty o' cheese for this recipe.

Finish the sauce by adding the chopped chicken and herbs and ta da.... its done.  The recipe calls for tarragon. I do not have any growing in my garden. I went to two stores looking for it and no one had it. Sad, sad, sad.  So I just chopped up some chives and basil that I do have growing in my yard and used that instead.  Tarragon would have been better, but oh well, work with what you got.

The filling:
Lets talk mushrooms! This is supposed to have morel mushrooms, which is a wild mushroom. They are hard to find unless you plan ahead and maybe try a farmer's market or go to whole paycheck {whole foods}. I don't live close to whole paycheck so I didn't even bother trying there. You can find these dried, however I personally don't like the texture of re-hydrated mushrooms. If you use dried, you just need to soak them in boiling hot water until soft. I chose to use crimini {which are not wild mushrooms at all, they are actually baby portobello mushrooms} They are readily available and delish, so there you go. Just quarter them so you have nice chunks in your crepes. Mushrooms are also mostly water, so initially it will look like you have a ton, but they shrink considerably during cooking.

Melt the butter in a saute pan then add the mushrooms. Turn the heat up to moderate high, you should hear a nice sizzle. This sound is the water from the mushrooms hitting the pan and evaporating. I have the different cooking stages pictured below. You want to cook them until they are golden brown and you have developed a nice fond {the yummy brown goodness that forms in the pan when you saute things}. The fond will ultimately give your sauce a richer flavor. Picture 3 is how they will look when ready. Then you deglaze the pan with the brandy. {I used sherry wine because I didn't have any brandy}Deglaze is just fancy for pour the brandy into the pan and stir it while it hisses at you and soaks up all the fond. {picture 4}

Once the brandy has almost evaporated, add your beans and saute everything together until the beans are tender. This should only take a couple minutes and will look like the picture below.

Step 3: Its crepe time!!

If you have a crepe pan, it makes it a little easier. However, with enough practice you can do it in a regular saute pan. I have a crepe pan of course, non stick, works great. If you are interested in eating more crepes, I would go ahead and just pick of a pan somewhere. The key here is you have to keep the batter moving by moving the pan in a circular motion to make the round shape. If you are too slow here it will start cooking and you will have a wad of cooked batter in the center of your pan.  And don't use too much batter, if they are too thick they are no good. I ended up using slightly more than 1/8 of a cup of batter per crepe.  Hopefully you can figure out what I'm doing in these pictures, this was really hard to get shots of.

You want to get the pan hot, about moderate high heat. Not on super high though because you don't want them to cook too fast or get a lot of color.  Lightly spray the pan with PAM pan spray for each crepe.  Angle the pan slightly forward and start pouring the batter from a measuring cup and rotate the pan in a circular motion so it swirls to cover the entire pan. These cook fast so you have to move faster. Warning: your first few will suck big time.  OK, your first whole lot of them will suck big time. Stick it out though and keep trying. You will get it eventually and will feel like you conquered the world when you do, or at least like you showed those crepes who's boss.  You have plenty of batter, I promise. It's ok to have some flubs.

Once you've made a nice circle you'll notice the edges will start to harden. Using a spatula, lift up the crepe from any point and give it a flip.  Let it cook for about 10 more seconds then remove the crepe from the pan. It should just slide right out onto a plate. You may need to coax it with your spatula, but it should come out pretty easy.  {look, even mine aren't perfect so don't worry if you's aren't too}

Step 4: Let's put it all together!

Finally the home stretch! Lets fill those crepes and eat. Warm your crepe pan on moderate-low heat and place a crepe in the pan. Sprinkle with a little of the emmentaler cheese and let it sit until it starts to melt.{picture 1} Once it melts, move it to your plate {picture 2} Make sure your Mornay sauce is warm and spread a little in the center of the crepe on top of the cheese, then top with the mushroom and bean mixture. {picture 3} Fold the sides of the crepe toward the center leaving a little space so you can see the filling. {picture 4}  Phew, that's it. See, quick and easy. BTW..... I spent more time blogging about this then I did actually making it.

Sweet Potato Agnolotti With Curry Emulsion

Thomas Keller French Laundry Cookbook Page 78, 80



I'm going to start by addressing the elephant in the room. I know you are all thinking, "what on earth is agnolotti?"  I had never heard of it either until a few months back when I did it with one of my classes on their Keller 5 course menu day. This is a recipe that this class's regular chef  has them prepare every module. This was my first time teaching that particular class, hence my first experience with this dish. Even though I have made it before, I still wanted to showcase this in my first posting because its so genius. Gotta love the Italians for being pasta genius's! Its basically the Piedmont version of regular ravioli.  I hate making home made ravioli. Its hard to get everything evenly spaced, then you have to mess with egg wash, then line up two perfectly shaped pieces of pasta sheets, and press it all together then finally cut them. Too much work. Too inconsistent in shape and size. Hate the air pockets.  Too messy.  This is a much easier and faster method that will make you wonder why they even still make ravioli. These also freeze well so you can make a bunch and freeze them for future dinners.   If you do decide to tackle this recipe, you have to make your own pasta dough. Its not hard at all, and only takes a few ingredients.  You must have a pasta machine though. The pasta sheets you will be making for this have to be super thin, which you will not be able to accomplish by hand. You should have a pasta machine anyways. Once again, keep your eyes peeled at the discount kitchen stores and you can usually find one for under $20. You'll spend more than that on one crummy meal at The Olive Garden. 

Step 1: Make the dough

1 3/4 c. All purpose flour
6 Large egg yolks
1 Large egg
1 1/2 tsp. Olive Oil
1 Tbs. Milk

The dough that T.K. uses is a high ratio egg yolk dough. Most pasta dough recipes I have used before only have a couple eggs. This has 6 yolks + 1 whole egg. This makes the dough a lot softer and richer. I will never go back to another dough recipe again. You can also make this ahead of time and as long as it stays wrapped tight, it can keep for a couple days.  I also like that he incorporates extra virgin olive oil in this dough. It gives it a really nice flavor. He doesn't include any salt though. I thought it needed a little. I would add just a pinch or two just to give it a little more flavor.  All you need to do to make the dough is pile the flour on a cutting board and make a well in the center. I however like to use a bowl for this. Its less messy and I feel like I have more control of the ingredients. Do whatever makes you happy.  Then just put all the wet ingredients (eggs, oil, milk) right into that well. I like making pasta because you get to get your hands dirty. Don't use a spoon. Nothing can beat the God given tools here that are connected to your arms. With your four fingers just swirl the wet ingredients around so it grabs the flour from the sides.

Once all the eggs and flour are incorporated it will look like the picture on the left.  Now you just turn this out onto a floured cutting board and knead it F-O-R-E-V-E-R. 

T.K recommends hand kneading it for 15 minutes. He actually says "even if you think you are done kneading, knead it for an extra 10 minutes".  I will admit.... this is painful. I vote if you have a kitchen aid with a dough arm, throw it in there. Unless you're shooting for one freakishly large bicep on one side, the mixer is your better bet. He is telling the truth though when he says you cannot over mix this dough. You can however undermix it, so make sure you go the full time.  It should be smooth and silky like the picture on the right when it is done being kneaded. Wrap it tight and LET IT REST! Resting is so important. Let it go at least an hour. Skip this step and you'll be sorry. If you have ever worked with regular bread dough and seen it stretch and retract when it isn't rested properly, it will do the same thing here. Let it get nice and soft and squishy.

 

Step 2: Its sauce time!

2 tsp. Curry Powder
2 Tbs. Chopped green onions
3/4 c + 2 Tbs. stock (vegetable or chicken) or water
1/4 c. Heavy cream
1/4 c. Creme Fraiche
8 Tbs. Unsalted butter, but into chunks
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

The curry emulsion sauce was easier than I thought it would be. This would be good on a lot of different things actually.  In case you don't know what an emulsion is......you guessed it, I will tell you.  I totally have to go all Bill Nye the science guy on you though.  Its a uniformly combined mixture of two or more liquids.  Vinaigrette's are an example of a temporary emulsion. The oil and vinegar will stay blended together as long as the fat particles are small enough to suspend in the liquid. That is why we shake or whisk them. The shaking breaks up the fat particles. However, they will separate back out once the fat particles gather back together and get too heavy again causing them to sink. Permanent emulsions, like mayonnaise, are held together with an emulsifying agent (egg yolks). The proteins in the egg yolks hold everything together which is why we don't have to give our mayo a shake shake every time you use it. phew. I'm now exiting Bill Nye mode.....

I once again did not have creme fraiche in hand so I subbed it with sour cream thinned out with water. You first toast the curry in a sauce pot. Toasting does something magical to everything. Its a great way to bring out flavor in food. Once you can smell the curry, add the green onions to it and saute for just a minute. Then just add cream, creme fraiche, and the water or stock and let it simmer until thick like in the picture on the left.  Creme fraiche is super cool because you can cook with it and it doesn't curdle like sour cream does. If you missed my post about creme fraiche you can read about it again here on the Joy of Baking website.  If you use sour cream instead of the creme fraiche, do NOT add it in at this point, it will curdle.  Add it after you remove the sauce from the heat.  Anyways, once the sauce is thick as pictured, you swirl in you butter (heat should be OFF at this point) and just stir it until the butter melts and incorporates into the sauce. Now you can add the sour cream if you are using it as a sub.  At this point just pour it into the blender and turn it on.  It will look like the picture on the right after its blended. If you aren't a curry fan, I think you will still like this. Its not an over powering curry like in most Indian dishes. It just really gives it a nice heat in your throat. If the sauce is too thick after removing it from the blender, you can thin it our with a little more hot water or stock. That's it. Oh and season with salt and pepper.

I actually ended up not being able to finish this dish in one day, so I had to fridge the sauce and save it for the next day when I finished the agnolotti's.  It got thicker in the fridge, but when I was ready to coat my cooked pasta in it, I just poured it out into the saute pan with the pasta and added a little of the pasta water to it to make it the consistency I wanted.

Step 3: Making the agnolotti

This is where is gets awesomely easy.  Seriously, if you love fresh ravioli but hate making them, you are going to fall in love today.

 

Part 1: The filling

2 pounds Sweet potatoes (The original recipe calls for fava beans. I couldn't get any so I subbed the sweet potatoes)
3/4 c. panko bread crumbs
1/3 c. Mascarpone cheese

  You can use ANY filling you want. The French Laundry book gives several suggestions. Basically as long as its soft you can use it. T.K. gives the example that you can't use whole shrimp but you can use shrimp mousse.  This curry emulsion recipe actually originally called for pureed fava beans for the filling. My vegetable stand no longer has them. (super bummed about this) I had to make a quick substitution and I chose to make a sweet potato filling.  I decided to oven roast my sweet potatoes as the cooking method because I like the flavor this way over boiling. Let me say this: Sweet holy Moses it takes forever to roast sweet potatoes!  I just put the whole sweet potatoes in a foil pouch with some butter and roasted them at 350 degrees and a whoppin' 3 hours later they were finally ready! You want them to get super soft though so they mash easily. Oh, sweet potatoes and yams..... not the same thing! The texture is way different. Yams are more stringy in texture after cooking. Not a fan using them as a filling in things. So I spent an eternity roasting the sweet potatoes. When they were finally done, I just peeled them while they were hot (the skin pulls right off) and then mashed them up really good and mixed in mascarpone cheese (similar to cream cheese but not as sweet) and salt and pepper.  Filling done.

 Part 2: Fill the angolotti

Its finally time to bust out the pasta machine! Break the dough into small pieces maybe the size of the palm of your hand. I have tiny hands. If yours are big, do maybe your inner palm size. Hopefully you get the idea.  Pass it through your machine starting on setting 1. Keep passing the sheet through adjusting the rollers 1 setting up at a time until you reach setting 7. You should be able to see your fingers through the dough.  If the ends get pointy and weird (not square) just fold the points in on itself before one of the passes. You want the final sheet to be even in width. If there is a little point on the end, you can just square it off with your pastry cutter. You need the length to fit on a cutting board if you don't have solid counter tops (not tile).  If you do have solid ones, you can just do this right on your counter top and you don't need to worry about the length. If you are using a cutting board just cut the strip in half to fit the board. Only roll out and fill one sheet at a time otherwise the dough may dry out because its so thin.

Using a fluted edge pastry roller, trim the edges on all sides so the edges are pretty.  Lay the pasta sheet on a well floured surface and pipe the filling from a pastry bag fitted with a large round tip in a straight line the full length of the sheet.  Pipe along the bottom edge leaving about an inch space from the bottom and sides like in the pictures below.

Roll the 1 inch  exposed edge of pasta over the filling and press down to seal.

Using your index finger and thumb pinch the pasta and filling leaving about 1 inch between pinches. This will form the individual agnolotti.  This dough ends up self sealing, with is why an egg wash is completely unnecessary in any of the steps.

Lastly, using your fluted pastry roller, cut the individual pieces buy rolling through the center of each pinch. Make sure its centered in the pinch so you don't cut through the filling. Once again, make sure you have plenty of flour on the board, otherwise they stick and will be hard to remove from the board.

Step 4: Cook and serve

If you are planning on cooking these immediately get a pot of salted water boiling before you start shaping the agnolotti. Water must be rapidly boiling before you add your pasta to it. I just want to add in a quick pasta cooking note.  You do not need to add any type of olive oil to the water when you cook pasta to "prevent sticking".  {I know a bunch of the food network chef's say to do it, but they are stupid [ ah hem.... Rachel Ray]  and I think are in a conspiracy with the olive oil industry. } Oil and water do not combine. That is fact.  As long as the pasta is wet, oil will not cling to it to prevent any type of sticking during the cooking process.  Making sure the water is rapidly boiling will help though.  The bubbles keep the pasta moving which keeps them from sticking.  So save your oil and stop doing this if you currently do.  

Drop the agnolotti into the boiling water and let them cook until they float to the top. This takes about 1 minute to happen. Let them cook about and additional 1-2 minutes before removing with a slotted spoon or a strainer like I did below. Pasta should whitish in color and be al dente { which means not mushy, but firm to the tooth. } Just break a little edge off of the tail of one of the pieces and taste it. If you are unsure what you are looking for texturally, stick to the 1-2 minute cooking time suggested above. You'll be fine.

Finally, in a large saute pan slightly warm your sauce and drop the hot cooked pasta straight into the sauce. Just toss to coat and you're ready to eat.  One thing that is cool about this weirdly shaped heavenly pillow is that there are more nooks and crannies for the sauce to hide in so it gets a better saucing then regular ravioli and has a better pasta to filling ratio.