My first adventure into pasta making was a lot of fun. Good learning experience- I learned a couple really important things. First, sticky dough is a disaster, you really need it to be the right consistency to make good noodles. Second, I’m not sure if you are supposed to do this, but every time I ran it through the roller at one level and was about to go down to a thinner roll, I dusted it with flour. That really helped.
My real problem is I haven’t quite figured out how to make do with only two hands- when I am feeding it through the cutter to make the spaghetti, I need one hand to hold the ough, one to operate the crank, and somewhere I need to find a third arm to collect the cut spaghetti (please, no Weiner/third arm jokes).
At any rate, we are going to have a pasta making party tomorrow, and everyone is going to come over, make a bunch different pastas and different sauces, drink lots of wine, and then eat tons. Should be fun.
Hopefully Kay will have a report from the BJ meet-up at NN#11, as that should be starting soon.
*** Update ***
Tech question. I have a 1 terabyte hd of music I am trying to get Itunes to recognize. What do I do?
John Weiss
JC, that sounds like a lot of fun!
Regarding the ‘third hand’, try setting the machine above the ‘landing zone’. If the dough is the right consistency, It’ll pile up, but not stick to it’s self.
I’ve had difficulty cooking “fresh” pasta; I dry mine before I cook it.
stuckinred
Pasta machine “how to video.”
stuckinred
Anyone have any experience with a MDHearingAid Acoustitone PRO Hearing Aid? They are thousands of dollars cheaper than prescription hearing aids.
daize
John, your pasta party sounds like a total blast. Have fun!
We finally gave up on the pasta cutter (it heated the dough and made it impossible to handle).
So here are our noodle making steps, if this is helpful:
– roll the dough out as if making a pie crust
– use a pizza cutter to cut the noodles
– let rest about an hour then toss in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds.
– enjoy!
Almost off topic — I had a kitty (Emma – gray, stray feline deluxe) who used to love crunching on dry spaghetti. She also chewed paper, which earned her the nickname “key punch kitty”.
wag
@stuckinred
I can’t respect anything the guy in the video says. He has granite countertops! f***ing elitist.
stuckinred
It’s an open thread, how can you be off topic?
The Dangerman
I’m thinking the third arm could be the machete being held between your teeth (it’s Friday; live dangerously).
schrodinger's cat
Open thread needs Tunch…
stuckinred
The Dangerman Or his kabar!
Cat Lady
Sorry, can’t come to your pasta party tomorrow, I’ve got another parade to go to instead.
ETA: This never gets old.
Martin
Attach your power drill to the crank and put it on a foot pedal. What could go wrong?
Alternatively, you could make a friend.
daize
stuckinred — Hah! You’re right! I guess I was thinking O/T regarding my pasta comment. :-)
I wish I had an answer for you regarding the hearing aids. My sole experience with them has been with my Dad — he gets his through the VA. They’re an annoyance for him at times, but such a good thing overall. Good luck.
wag
@stuckinred
That said, I really like his idea of tossing the past with corn meal. What a great idea. I avoid adding more flour to the dough, try not to make it any stickier.
This is a really great pasta book, with excellent recipes for noodles, in addition to fantastic sauces. I highly recommend it.
schrodinger's cat
I got some lobsters yesterday. I am going to make sandwiches with lobster meat and homemade mayo and great peasant bread I got yesterday and serve it with a salad and some cold beer.
John Weiss
@stuckinred I know several folk who invested in fancy-assed hearing aids and not one of them liked the experience much.
trollhattan
FWIW the pasta making gizmo that attaches to the front of a Kitchen Aid mixer (insert McGargle joke here) is the perfect antidote to the hand-crank need-three-hands dilemma. It makes the task sooo much easier.
stuckinred
My old man had 40mm’s going off in his ears in the pacific and he eventually had to buy his own. I was driving a jeep when the dude of the 60 let go right over my head. It was like getting hit in the head with a hammer. That and the Allman Brothers, Blue Cheer and the Dead. . .well you get the picture. Zip from the VA.
wag
@trollhatten
I second that. And you can use the stand mixer to mix the dough before attaching the pasta maker attachment.
schrodinger's cat
Anybody have any recipes utilizing fresh vanilla beans? I got them as a gift, they are from Kerala and I have no idea what to do with them since I am not a baker. Any suggestions appreciated. I also have some almond meal that I need to finish.
Linda Featheringill
It’s an open thread . . .
Sally Quinn actually has written a sensitive piece about Weiner and his wife.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/humas-choice-stay-with-weiner-or-go/2011/06/14/AGB5EtYH_blog.html
trollhattan
re. the iTunes Q: I force the issue by copying the new folders into the itunes media/music folder. Alternatively you can have itunes go fetch them, but for me that often leads to FYIT moments.
4jkb4ia
Here’s one and two stories from today’s NYT where the reporter talked to grass-roots Republicans and, evidently without being prompted, a real, live person said, “I like Herman Cain”. And one of them was in Alabama. I think this should destroy one meaning of “joke”.
wag
@scho…cat
slit the bean lengthwise and put it in a jar of sugar. Put the jar in a dark place for a few weeks and you’ll have vanilla flavored sugar for whatever use you can think of. Keep taking the sugar at internals until you get to the level of flavor you like.
I bet you could make a really killer cocktail (shaken daiquiri perhaps?) using vanilla simple syrup as a base.
jnfr
I need to say, again and again, how much I hate bindweed. Here I am almost 13 years after moving into this house and the stuff springs up like crazy every damn spring. I can mostly keep it out of my raised beds, but I am so f’ing sick of pulling bindweed, trimming bindweed, poisoning bindweed. Gah! It will NOT STOP.
stuckinred
trollhattan
Should be able to go to file>add to library and navigate to the big folder and import.
Keith
on the iTunes problem – I tend to use CopyTrans or other iTunes library managers. That might allow the library to be split and reorganized into smaller sub-libraries.
It works faster than iTunes and is much more flexible.
The Other Chuck
Cut one of those beans in half lengthwise, drop it in a bottle of nice dark rum, let it sit for at least a week. You’ll want to cut it with non-vanilla rum or it’ll taste like you’re drinking vanilla extract (which you kind of are, just added rum).
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@shrodinger’s cat: Make vanilla ice cream. I use the recipe on p. 2 of this article (which provides a good outline of the whole process), but during the first step (heating cream with sugar) add a vanilla bean. When that has cooled, take out the bean, split it open, and scrape most or all of the tiny seeds into the cream, then proceed with the rest of the steps.
Edit: you can use the almond meal to thicken a curry and add some flavor.
Jeff
On a Mac, go to iTunes preferences/Advanced, and then point iTunes to your hard drive. No idea on a Windows machine.
The Dangerman
re: Vanilla Beans
Homemade Kahlua. Then you’d have Kerala Kahlua.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Linda Featheringill: you’re kidding!? I can’t believe it! Is what you’re saying really true?! Sally Quinn is still alive!? No way.
Xantar
Don’t know if you have a Mac or Windows machine, but on my Mac the way to do it is to open Preferences, go to the Advanced tab and then you will have a chance to tell it the location of your iTunes Media Folder.
BGinCHI
Where in the hell is Jeffrey??!!
Thread made for him…..
Cole, what kind of sauces you making? I’d suggest doing traditional aglio e olio with some of it. Really lets the flavor stand out.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Or you can get the single-purpose motor that cranks your pasta roller for you. It might be cheaper than the pasta roller set for a Kitchen Aid, especially if you don’t have a Kitchen Aid yet.
jwb
I enjoyed Matt Bai‘s pathetic attempt to turn Huntsman into a serious candidate. “the presidential primary electorate will be very different from the 2010 primaries for House and Senate.” Bwaahaha. He thinks there are enough sane goopers who didn’t vote in the 2010 primaries to make a difference in the gooper presidential primary in 2012.
John Weiss
@schrodinger’s cat: That is my wife’s favorite sandwich of all time. Many years ago, when we were both (relatively) young and beautiful, the folks who ran the place we were staying in St. Kitt’s made lobster sandwiches. Fresh bread, lightly toasted, mayo and fresh-caught lobster my, my. What a place!
Poopyman
Where’s gbear? They won’t seat us and we’re shoved in a corner by the door. Hope he finds us.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Fortunately, President Obama is of sufficient moral character to look the other way at the crimes done in his name by himself and others, as he clearly stated during his campaign.
.
.
jwb
@Mike Kay (True Grit): I don’t get what this has to do with Weiner or weiners. There’s only one thing I can count on these days and that’s you talking obsessively about Weiner’s weiner, and now you go an destroy the one thing holding my world together.
John Weiss
@jnfr: “I need to say, again and again, how much I hate bindweed. Here I am almost 13 years after moving into this house and the stuff springs up like crazy every damn spring. I can mostly keep it out of my raised beds, but I am so f’ing sick of pulling bindweed, trimming bindweed, poisoning bindweed. Gah! It will NOT STOP.”
Girdle your loins and get yourself some pre-emergent herbicide, which will stop anything from germinating where you put it, but which will not affect either established or transplanted plants.
Violet
@ Linda Featheringill:
Oh, you have GOT to be kidding. That’s rich, coming from her. Listen to this drivel:
Really? Is that the advice she gave her boss’s wife, when she was sleeping with him? What a hypocritical boil on society she is.
And this bit:
So Sally Quinn knows Huma Abedin’s mind and knows she’ll be under pressure from herself? Really? And who are these imaginary people who will put her under “a lot of pressure to forgive her husband”? Won’t most people say she should do what’s best for her? And by most people, I mean most people, not Sally Quinn’s incestuous little Villager clique.
Ugh. She’s disgusting.
Violet
Dang, I got sent to moderation. Okay, changing the bad word:
@ Linda Featheringill:
Oh, you have GOT to be kidding. That’s rich, coming from her. Listen to this drivel:
Really? Is that the advice she gave her boss’s wife, when she was sleeping with him? What a hypocritical boil on society she is.
And this bit:
So Sally Quinn knows Huma Abedin’s mind and knows she’ll be under pressure from herself? Really? And who are these imaginary people who will put her under “a lot of pressure to forgive her husband”? Won’t most people say she should do what’s best for her? And by most people, I mean most people, not Sally Quinn’s inc3stuous little Villager clique.
Ugh. She’s disgusting.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
You can make vanilla sugar by putting the beans into a plastic container with the sugar and letting them sit together for a month or two. Or, if you use a french press, you can make really good vanilla coffee. You cut the bean in half lengthwise, scrape out the inside, and add both the inside and the outside (cut into smaller pieces so it fits into the press) to the coffee before you add the water. You could make your own vanilla extract by cutting up the bean the same way and soaking it in vodka.
Brain Hertz
iTunes question:
Don’t futz around with the library location – that can have other unintended consequences. On the file menu, you just select “add folder to library…”.
You can also add individual files. I do it all the time, because we have multiple itunes users on the same machine – all of the libraries are in a shared area, but whenever somebody else buys a song from the store, you have to manually add the file to your library in order to see it.
trollhattan
@jnfr
I’ve not suffered that particular malady, but here’s what the propellerheads say about it.
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7462.html
My bete noir is Bermuda grass.
Stooleo
This is the best book I have read on how to make good pasta.
“Giuliano Bugialli’s Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking “.
Warren Terra
The iTunes answer is pretty straightforward, but comes with a big kick.
The trick is that iTunes isn’t really a media player: it’s a file manager. It’s not a very good one, and as far as I can tell from my experience as a user it insists on a fixed directory structure, in one single location, including all of the source music files (this is different from other programs, like Windows Media Player, that try to find and make accessible music files wherever on your system they might happen to be). iTunes doesn’t seem to handle removable media and multiple storage locations well.
If your 1 TB hard drive isn’t removable (or at least, if you will have it plugged in whenever you have iTunes running), the easy solution is to tell iTunes to host its music library on that hard drive. In Windows, this is “Edit/Preferences/(advanced tab)/iTunes media folder location”.
Once the directory structure is there, drag all of your music files and folders in to “iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add To iTunes”, and it will do what the directory name suggests (iTunes appears to check for additions to this directory extremely often while it’s running – probably at least every second).
MizB
NONONO-lobster roll with mayo?!?! Sacrilege I say! Lobster & drawn butter in a lightly grilled on the outside hot dog roll.
Poopyman
We’re upstairs, seated finally. Four of us so far. Anyone checking in, you can see Kay’s nametag hanging over the baluster.
Warren Terra
@Brain Hertz:
If you “Add folder to library”, does iTunes add the contents of the folder to its playable media while leaving the actual bits in place, or does it try to copy/move all those bits to its own iTunes directory, quite possibly located on a hard drive that doesn’t have 1 TB of free space? Because the latter had been my impression …
daize
stuckinred — I don’t mean to presume to understand your situation or offer unwanted advice, but if you qualify for VA health benefits you should be able to get hearing aids through the VA. Depending upon your income you may be required to pay a fee (usually small in our experience).
Since my Dad is now disabled and in assisted living (82 years old, RA, Hep C plus a stroke) he also qualifies for a pension. His Rx and basic doctors’ visits are covered for free. (But sometimes it’s hard to get the exact prescription you need — each state has its own guidelines.)
Again, good luck. It took us a while to get Dad hooked up with the VA but it’s been truly a godsend.
arguingwithsignposts
@john weiss – gird your loins, not girdle.
freelancer
But did you first sift the flour in a food processor?
MikeJ
For iTunes, put “Lousy Fucking Stupid Piece of Goat Shit iTunes” into google and find yourself at cleek’s site. Then you can be amused by the comments.
hstram
i found if i got it just the right consistency and i kept going with the crank, the teeth would hold the dough, freeing up that arm to catch the cut pasta. you’re basically pulling the cut pasta out with your free hand, keeping the dough taut.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@jwb: That’s not true at all. I still fulfill my obot quota. I did a whole bunch this morning. you musta missed it. but if you need more weiner, turn on msnbc, that’s all they’re talkn bout. Hell, even olbermann can’t stop makin jokes about it as he promotes his new show.
Warren Terra
@Mike
That works – but it’s at the top of the list, indented and with an arrow pointing at it, which I had thought denoted a sponsored link. Did Cleek pay good money to be the first hit on those search terms ?!
General Stuck
“NN#11” – is that like a prog numbering system for all the times obama failed us?
Anne Laurie
Not a cook, but this seems like as good a place as any to mention that I have fallen in love with Upton’s vanilla-flavored tea.
If you vanilla beans & almond meal, you would seem to be well on the way to making your own marzipan, although that’s even a more rarified item than vanilla tea…
Kay
We are upstairs on the left if cbear is looking for us.
Warren Terra
@General Stuck:
It indicates that this is Netroots Nation number 11. In base five. It’s to make it easier on the Firebaggers in attendance, as they have difficulties counting if they have to use more than one hand.
Corner Stone
@Uncle Clarence Thomas #38
Uncle Clarence Thomas, do you believe, as I do, that it’s due to President Obama’s fierce love of the USofA that gives him the strength to act so fiercely in defending us all by breaking laws or fiercely looking forward when necessary?
delosgatos
Second (or third?) the KitchenAid pasta roller, but I’ve used the hand crank kind too.
If you get the pasta texture right you don’t really have to hold it much while you’re feeding it in, it will just kind of slide along – lay the sheet out smoothly. Occasionally you may have to let og of the crank and shift the sheet forward to keep it moving.
Also helps to cut the sheet in half or thirds or whatever length you want the final spaghetti so you don’t have to worry about cutting it on the other side. Then, grab a wooden dowel and as it comes out catch it on the dowel so it’s lined up neatly. If you have a place to put the dowel so the pasta hangs this is a great way to dry it. You can buy pasta drying racks that are basically a little stand for several short dowels (included).
I’ve been loving the following simple sauce: Saute some garlic in a mild oil (don’t use fancy olive oil as the oil will be overwhelmed and cooked). Add a bit of chicken stock and a bit of white wine. Cook to reduce by half (or maybe it’s more… whatever looks right). Toss the pasta in this sauce. Toss in some cooked peas (you can use frozen peas that you’ve poured boiling water over and let sit a few minutes, then drained). After putting in serving bowls, grate some fresh parmesan over and sprinkle with prosciutto fried up like bacon and crumbled.
Even simpler, toss the pasta with some high end olive oil, put in serving bowls, grate parmesan and sprinkle crunbled fried prosciutto.
Oh, I hope you have a pasta cooking pot (with the strainer insert) so you can get your pasta 75% done, remove the strainer with the pasta, stop the cooking with cold water while keeping the cooking water boiling, then when everything else is done finish the pasta with 1-3 minutes more in the boiling water. :)
JPL
MizB .. Yes. Growing up Catholic Friday nights were fish nights. The hot dog roll used didn’t have all the crusty sides like you see in the south though. YUM
dlnelson
Maybe some folks marry for the riches. It does not stretch the imagination that a forty five year old guy acting out is marrying for the “in”. He has been a bachelor, and apparently does not respect women. Oh woe is me. Give me the fainting couch. He will fail upward. I personally have no problem with him, these guys are a dime a dozen, he is so stupid, he should know better. Another day, another asshole. I am a woman, I loved his rants on the floor, but for goodness sakes, as a male he is a mess. Men can be cads, get over it.
magurakurin
Old people have spoken. The AARP, apparent assholes that they are, have decided that, even though they all retired at 62, it would be fair if the people born today should be made to retire at 69. Fucking dicks. And I’m not young. I’m staring down the barrel of 50. But of course Reagan already fucked me and it’s 67 for the Class of ’80. My words to the oldsters who get behind this, “fuck off and die already.”
You want to “fix” Social Security. Raise the fucking income cap for fuck’s sake.
jeffreyw
@ schrodinger’s cat #19
Ice cream is the perfect use for vanilla beans. You will also need some pie.
jeffreyw
If no pie, then dog is needed.
MizB
JPL-same here-Friday fish nights. Yes, not the crusty-on-the-outside hot dog rolls. According to the Wiki, the correct term is Frankfurter rolls.
“There are two basic types: top-loading, which are available only in New England and called Frankfurter rolls, New England Style Rolls or Lobster Buns in some areas, and side-loading, common in the rest of the United States also called American Style Buns.”
kdaug
For Friday.
Aim to make it a running theme for the weekend.
Gin & Tonic
On the vanilla beans — take a quart jar, fill as tightly as you can with fresh cherries, dump in enough sugar to fill the empty spaces about halfway, fill the rest of the jar with vodka, take a piece of vanilla bean about an inch long and put it in the jar, seal and put away for a couple of months. You can thank me then.
Elie
I love home made “soft” handmade pasta but in Italy, it is used with the most delicate sauces, where “hard”, dried pasta can stand up to more robust red and meat sauces. Not trying to broadcast “rules”. People should eat as they so design, but I did not know that when I took up Italian cooking (which I adore) and thought that I would share that with whoever. Please, carry on as you deem fit.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat #14:
Not lobster, but the general theme should work for your sammiches.
Anne Laurie
JNFR R @ #24: I see your bindweed, and raise you ailanthus, a/k/a ‘stink tree’, ‘city sumac’, and ‘profanity maximus’. Shoots suckers up to a hundred yards in all directions, comes up through concrete, our expensive new asphault driveway, & Roundup’d ground topped with double layers of ‘weedproof’ fabric & a foot of clean topsoil to invade my raised beds. Kills worthwhile plants trying to grow in its vicinity, breeds vast quantities of house-invading white moths that local birds won’t eat, and can’t be hand-pulled. I can live with most of the invasive weeds here in New England — even the caustic bittersweet vine (which keeps trying to strangle the 60ft ailanthus that drops woody stems all over our backyard from just the other side of the chainlink). But I’d give either one of my big toes in return for the immediate disappearance of the entire ailanthus clan from this tortured planet!
TaMara (BHF)
I seem to be inexplicably in moderation. Hrumpf.
jeffreyw
Vanilla extract recipe.
J. Michael Neal
I have arrived at the table at Brit’s. A good time is going to be had by all, dammit.
TaMara (BHF)
@77 JMN – pictures or it didn’t happen.
JPL
Anne Laurie..Try ridding your yard of bamboo…hahaha Roundup is the safest thing to use without killing the soil.
You have to cut the stalk, which is not easy and use round-up on the cut within ten seconds because they heal quickly.
Corner Stone
@JMN
The bad joss amigo. It surrounds you.
Poopyman
Comrade Kevin and JMNeale found us. We could tell them by the BJWebpage in their outstretched hands. We just ordered food, so if you’re looking for us, come on upstairs.
Mike in NC
For the first 20 years of my life the only pasta I saw came out of a can.
Anne Laurie
JPL: The Spousal Unit wanted to put in a clump of bamboo because it was ‘nice looking’ (and the vendor swore it wouldn’t spread, not this kind of bamboo). I told him bamboo would come into my yard only over his dead body, and that went double for the vendor.
lamh34
everytime I hear this song I think about my sisters, even though it’s not really about sisters…lol
Plus The Color Purple was robbed!!!! Hollywood hates Black movies!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsvK8WCPj1Y
JPL
Anne Laurie..supposedly there is a clumping type of bamboo but to be safe you could tell him to dig two feet down and put up a cement barrier. That might deter him. In the south they suggest you dig down three feet.
Poopyman
JMN has 4? 5? Shots in front of him. And a keyboard.
Stay tuned ….
ETA – Scotch, for those keeping score.
Martin
I hate to harsh on your rant, but you weren’t born today, and I doubt very much that they’d raise the age for anyone already in the phase-in from the last increase. And I don’t see AARP advocating for anything different than that.
gwangung
Uh…..oh.
TaMara (BHF)
Not to complain, and not that I had anything of real importance to say, but could one of the front pagers get me out of moderation? Pretty please.
mikefromArlington
Couple pointers. Whole wheat flower, a tad of olive oil, and eggs. That’s it.
In my opinion the whole wheat flower fresh pasta is much better for any pasta you make, spaghetti, tagliatelle or ravioli.
Enjoy.
J. Michael Neal
Geez, Poopyman, they aren’t even full sized shots, and scotch is wussy weak to an experienced bourbon drinker.
waratah
Recently discovered how good fresh pasta is so now will try to make some.
Does anyone have a good marinade for boneless chicken breast to be grilled on the barbecue?
MikeJ
This is the point where I usually hand my phone over to somebody more sober. Or at least somebody else who is less likely to dial people in the phone’s directory.
Dixon
If the HD has new music you are adding to an already existing iTunes music folder, just open iTunes and drag the file from the HD and drop right into the “Library” on the left. Otherwise set your iTunes to point to that folder as described by Jeff at 29.
J. Michael Neal
MikeJ – What’s the fun in that?
Jon H
In iTunes:
1. In Preferences, go to the Advanced pane and make sure “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” is *not* checked.
2. File->Add To Library
You might just be able to point that at your TB hard drive, in which case it’ll find everything and add it to your library. But it won’t copy the files to your current library, which I assume is not what you want.
Poopyman
JMN, don’t forget the Bourbon and Bacon Tasting Happy Hour tomorrow at 4:15.
Who sez NN is all about politics?
Litlebritdifrnt
“36.John Weiss – June 17, 2011 | 7:37 pm · Link
@schrodinger’s cat: That is my wife’s favorite sandwich of all time. Many years ago, when we were both (relatively) young and beautiful, the folks who ran the place we were staying in St. Kitt’s made lobster sandwiches. Fresh bread, lightly toasted, mayo and fresh-caught lobster my, my. What a place!”
I could not agree more for the first week of my vacation in St. Kitts I was the only guest in the hotel. From the huge Fruit and White Rum basket that greeted me when I checked in to the “what would ma’am like for breakfast this morning?” “what are my options” “pretty much anything” to dinner “what would ma’am like for dinner this evening lobster again?” Me “yes please” to some dude trecking into the rainforest to chop down bunches of fresh bananas for daquaries (the local posh folk used to join me at the bar in the evenings). I was fine with the daquaris, it was the night that they introduced me to Long Island Iced Tea that things got silly! How can your head and brain be sober but the rest of your body drunk? Anyway I agree St. Kitts is an absolutely brilliant place.
MikeJ
J. Michael Neal – I tend to have more fun when I get back to the same city where the person I would have dialed is when I haven’t drunkenly dialed with an eight hour time zone difference.
I’ve had too many, “Yeah. Listen. Listen, hey. I’ll come over Christmas Eve. Okay? Trimma goddarn tree for ya. Okay?”
WaterGirl
I have two recipes that call for fresh vanilla beans. Here’s the first one:
Crescent Cookies ala Tina & Nancy (full credit to Betsey for ingredients!)
1 cup confectioner’s sugar 1⁄4 vanilla bean
1 c. room temperature butter
3⁄4 c. sugar
I cup pecans in very tiny pieces
2-1/2 c. flour
The night before:
Blend 1⁄4 vanilla bean, finely chopped, with 1 c. confectioner’s sugar.
(Use a blender or pound with the sugar.)
Let sit overnight.
Cream butter and baker’s sugar.
Mix in finely chopped pecans. Add flour.
Roll small amount of dough into logs, then shape into crescents.
Bake on ungreased cookie sheet or baking stone.
Bake 12 minutes 350 degrees until cookie looks dry on top.
Cool.
Sprinkle lightly with vanilla powdered sugar.
WaterGirl
Here’s my other vanilla bean recipe: White Peach Ice Cream
6 whole Ripe White Peaches
½ cups Sugar
1 whole Lemon, Juiced
2 cups Whole Milk
4 whole Egg Yolks
¾ cups Light Brown Sugar
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 whole Vanilla Bean
Peel and chop the peaches into large chunks. Save the skin and pits.
In a medium saucepan, place the peaches 1/2 cup sugar, and lemon juice. Slice the vanilla bean lengthwise to get to the seeds. With a knife carefully remove the seeds from 1 half of the vanilla bean, and place them and the half of the bean into the sauce pan along with the peach mixture. Bring to a boil, then lower the temperature and cook for 20 minutes or until the peaches are tender, let it cool and place in the refrigerator until completely chilled.
In another saucepan, place the whole milk, the remaining seeds and vanilla bean from the other half of the bean along with the reserved peach skin and pits. Bring to a simmer then turn off the heat and let it steep for at least 30 minutes or let it cool and place in the refrigerator overnight. After the skin and pits have steeped in the milk long enough, strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a clean bowl. Set aside until ready to use.
Whisk together the egg yolks and light brown sugar until light and creamy.
Warm up the peach infused milk until very hot–be careful not to boil it. Slowly pour a ladle or two of the hot milk into the egg and sugar mixture while stirring constantly to prevent the eggs from curdling.
Slowly pour the tempered egg mixture back into the saucepan along with the peach infused milk. Cook the ice cream base over medium heat while stirring constantly until it thickens.
Strain the custard through a fine mesh sieve into a clean bowl and stir in the heavy cream. Now… for a chunky texture remove the cooked peaches from the refrigerator and add them directly into the bowl, for a smoother consistency mash them through a sieve into the bowl then stir well to incorporate. Set the bowl over an ice bath to cool it and then finish chilling the ice cream base in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
Pour ice cream base into your ice cream maker and follow your manufacturer’s instructions to prepare the ice cream. Pour ice cream into a sealable plastic container and place in the freezer until thoroughly frozen.
Barry
4jkb4ia @24: “And one of them was in Alabama. I think this should destroy one meaning of “joke”.”
Uh…………….that joke rights itself. Alabama isn’t doing the rest of the USA proud right now.
schrodinger's cat
Many thanks to all those who have given suggestions about the vanilla beans. I really appreciate it. A lot of food for thought, for sure.
Maude
Don’t plant ribbon grass. It takes over.
kdaug
Tullamore Dew. On the rocks.
IrishGirl
John, I too have a pasta maker and a gaggle of animals (three cats right now). My problem isn’t the same as yours but maybe it is and you haven’t thought this out yet, but how do you hang up your pasta so that 1) it dries properly, 2) no animal hair gets in it, and 3) the *!%$/[email protected]! cats don’t play with it.
While it seems as if I am joking, I am totally serious…..how the bleep do I dry it properly. I don’t want to have to traipse with my fresh pasta across the house to hang it up to dry in someone’s bedroom.
Final question, how long does it need to dry? I am thinking of making fresh pasta put into various interesting glass containers as Christmas gifts this year with cute instructions on how to cook fresh pasta. It sounds adorable but it’s a lot of friggin work.
DB
There’s only one way to make noodles properly: by hand, no machinery whatsoever.
PROOF:
(1) Remember that Europe learned about pasta from the Chinese.
(2) Watch this amazing video (from the special features on the Kung Fu Panda DVD).
QED.
Brain Hertz
Unless it changed recently, it does the former