Notes from Windward: #68

 

Pita and Pasta

Adriann and Margaret take on some whole wheat projects


     Margaret and I have been enjoying making delicious food from what we can find around the kitchen. If our experience is any guide, experimenting is fun and not as difficult as you might think. For example, here are two delicious recipes that we made from our home-ground flour.

Pita Bread:

  • 2.5 cups warm water (just a bit warmer than your finger)
  • 2 teaspoons yeast
  • 2 Tablespoons honey or sugar
  • 5+ cups of flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Mix the yeast, warm water, and sugar and let this sit for a few minutes.
Stir in the flour and turn the dough out onto a floured surface for kneading.
Put the kneaded dough in a warm place and let it rise for an hour or until doubled in bulk.
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees and place one of the racks on the bottom shelf.
Kneed the dough again briefly.
Form small balls of dough and use a rolling pin to flatten them to discs about ¼ inches thick.
Make sure the discs are floured so that they do not stick, then place them on a baking sheet and allow them to bake for 4 minutes.
Then turn the pita over and allow the other side to bake for 2 minutes.
Repeat until all the dough is made into delicious delicious pitas.
Reheating cold pitas in the toaster oven makes them taste like they are fresh-baked again.

Margaret cooks up some fresh ravioli
  


Ravioli:

Dough:
  • 3 eggs, beaten
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • enough flour to make a non-sticky dough
  • 1 teaspoon of salt

Combine the above ingredients and kneed the dough.
Roll it out as thin as possible without threatening its structural integrity, using plenty of flour to prevent sticking.
Cut it into interesting shapes for regular pasta. We found that bowties made from squares of dough were particularly successful.
For ravioli, put a scoop of filling on the dough and cut around it, leaving a flap of extra dough to create a pocket. You do not want these pockets to open up in the boiling water, so seal them by moistening the edges of the dough that you are trying to stick together. You may want to use a fork to make fancy edges on your ravioli.
Then bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. The pasta will sink when raw and float when cooked. Add about as much pasta as would fill the top of the pot, and allow to cook for just a few minutes until it floats. Scoop up the pasta with a slotted spoon.
If you are not serving it immediately you should spread it out to prevent it from sticking to itself.
Filling: Well, this could be anything. In our kitchen we had a lot of carrots.

  • 5 good carrots
  • 2 tablespoons fresh minced ginger
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 teaspoon sage
  • 1 tablespoon of oil
Boil the carrots until soft and mushy. Sauté the garlic, ginger and sage in a bit of oil. Then add the carrots and mash everything together. Use as filling in the above recipe.


Notes From Windward - Index - Vol. 68