Foodie Friday: Newduls

Do this for me. Buy yourself an inexpensive pasta machine. I mean, fork over the twenty-three bucks and get yourself a simple 9-setting, hand-cranked machine. Scratch pasta is the easiest thing in the world, just two ingredients, and it is so goddamn good. This is my current favorite pasta with wide-cut, hand-made noodles, dressed with a bright, tomato-based sauce made with the extraordinary Castelventrano olives of Sicily.

For the noodles

4-ish cups finely ground (“00”), unbleached flour
4-5 eggs (depending on size)
splash of cold water

For the basic tomato sauce

16 oz. whole peeled Roma tomatoes, hand crushed
1 yellow onion, finely diced
6-8 cloves garlic, smashed and finely diced
1 medium carrot, finely grated
pinch of raw sugar
dash of slightly soured, day-ish old red wine
sea salt
extra virgin olive oil

For the olive sauce

1/2 lb. Castelventrano olives, pitted per instructions below
2 small, hot chili peppers, chopped
tablespoon crushed fennel seeds
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt

Start by making the pasta dough. All the fancy new Italian cookbooks tell you to use “the well method”—you can look it up—but I start in a wide, shallow mixing bowl before upending onto the work surface. The basic rule is one egg per cup of flour, but as I prefer smaller eggs for their higher yolk-to-white ratio and more intense flavor, I often add an extra to get the volume right. Create a depression in the middle of the flour, crack the eggs directly into it, splash in perhaps a tablespoon of water, and slowly whisk/incorporate the flour and egg. (The water just makes an ever-so-slightly more pliant, workable dough). When you have a crumbly mixture, upend onto the work surface and begin to knead together. This requires some patience, and at first it will seem wrong. Remember: you are trying to make a very dry, stiff dough, in order to get firm, robust noodles. Don’t worry if you seem to lose a lot of flour in the process. That is normal.

Once the dough is formed into a stiff ball, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and set aside to rest and relax. Recipes advise a half an hour, but I always give it an hour at room temperature.

Now make the tomato sauce. Sweat out the onions, garlic, and carrot with a bit of salt in olive oil over a medium heat. Deglaze the pan with a splash of old, slightly vinegared red wine. Add the tomatoes, a pinch of sugar, and some more salt to taste. Bring almost to a boil, then reduce head and leave to simmer, covered, on a back burner.

Put on a very large pot of very salty water to boil.

Roll out your noodles. Divide the dough into quarters. Beginning at the lowest setting (in which the rollers are the farthest apart), work the dough into long sheets of pasta. At the lower settings, you will pass through once, then fold the dough back on itself and pass through again before moving onto the next setting. Typically, on my 9-setting machine, I do two passes at 1, two passes at 2, and two passes at 3. After that, I do a single pass through at each of the odd settings up to 9. As you roll it, it should be pliable, but not tacky. If it feels even slightly tacky to the touch, give the sheet a good rub, front and back, with flour. Lay out each long sheet on parchment paper.

Make the olive sauce. Crush the olives with the flat side of a knife. Remove the pit. Roughly chop the remaining flesh. Heat a very generous portion of extra virgin olive oil over high heat. Add the olives and chilis. Sauté together for just a minute or two. Add your tomato sauce and fennel seed. Salt to taste. Reduce heat to medium low.

By now your water should be at a rolling boil. With a pizza cutter, cut wide (1 1/2”) noodles perpendicular to each pasta sheet. Add them to the water. Cook for about 2 minutes. Increase the heat on the sauce to very high. Remove noodles with a strainer or slotted spoon and add directly to the sauce. Toss together for another minute. Serve immediately, garnished with a salty aged cheese like Pecorino Romano.