Dough Girl

So I’m really full from eating so I doubt I’ll make this post long.

Food just addles my brain too much. Been a quiet week here and we didn’t do anything for Easter. I feel sort of conflicted about the whole egg thing b/c a. I obviously wouldn’t want to use eggs, b. it seems like a waste of food, and c. are plastic eggs recyclable or even worth the effort? Maybe we ought to make Jezey-Crezey scavenger hunts so that kids are more connected and plus it might be kind of funny to think up items. Or maybe I’m just a party pooper and shouldn’t worry about all the real and fake eggs.

So yes, hmm. I’ve decided I need to make more Italian, Indian, and Eastern European food since I’m rather bad at it. Not so much in the sense that the food is bad but I am less familiar with it so it’s hard to improvise. Although when it comes to E.European food I am totally learning since I’ve never really had it before.

I set out yesterday to make some Samosas since Nathan really loves taters and they seem like a nice food item to freeze like wontons. I got a recipe online and the recipe for the most part was pretty solid.

I have to admit though that the dough wasn’t as firm as it should have been. I’m not sure if it had to do with the size of the semolina flour that I used or what because I rolled the the dough out into 6in. diameter shapes (notice shapes…at this time I suck at making nice little circles) and it seemed a bit thin. The video said to form the halves into cones and hold it as an ice cream cone but the dough kept collapsing on itself. So I simply ended up plopping the mixture on the dough and then folding the corners and top over.

So I ended up saving them for today and defrosted them and made the salad. Mmm salad…I like to put flaxseed meal on the salads for more nutrients and I can’t even taste it so I would really recommend trying it…get your Omegas. Anyway, I was considering baking them since it’s healthier but we mainly get our fats from oils and nuts now a days and fried food is just so great. They turned out really tasty but next time I think I need to boil the taters a bit longer. They just seemed a bit uneven in certain parts but not totally hard by any means. Also I think I’ll try another dough recipe since it seemed a bit thin and I did find one with chickpea flour that sounded tasty. I paired up the Samosas with a Mango Chutney since I had some on hand but I’m not sure what is considered traditional. Overall I thought it was totally yummy.

For dinner I decided to make home made ravioli. It took about 2 hours from start to finish which isn’t bad since it was a new recipe and I hadn’t made pasta at home. Mixed the flours and water and apparently semolina dough is kind of hard to work with and I’m not sure if it’s hard with eggs or not but I would say that it was a bit tough to get it to the elasticity that I wanted. Bascially just flour, semolina, olive oil, and water…knead for ten min. and then wrap in a towel.

So for all those who may be inspired to make some home-made pasta I warn you to make the well of the flour much bigger than my little one. I poured in the water and it started overflowing and needless to say I ended up with a very messy shirt by the time it was over. The dough isn’t as yellow as I had thought it would be but that is most likely because of the lack of eggs but it was still a very nice dough.

I divided the dough into quarters and rolled two pieces out at a time keeping one under a moist towel. By the end my arms and shoulders were a bit achy and I seemed to have learned a good thickness for the dough. Now all I have to learn is to make sheets or circles when I roll the dough 😦

The filling was spinach and Tofu ricotta. The spinach I simply let sweat a bit in the pan and then chopped it up. The Tofu ricotta is pretty simple, just crumble firm tofu and add basil, nut. yeast, salt, minced garlic, lemon juice (I didn’t have any so I added a bit of vinegar), and salt to taste. Then I just mixed it up and spooned it out.

Dinner came out really yummy but I totally messed up while boiling the ravioli. I was heating up the sauce (out of the jar…not making homemade sauce too!) with a wooden spoon so I thought I’d just push down the raviolis with the end of spoon for even cooking. I didn’t notice until a few dunks that the spoon end was puncturing some of the raviolis! Omg how annoying. Thankfully most of them were intact but Nathan still ate some of the left over filling.

The only thing is that I’m kind of bummed that there are no left overs since it took so long to make. Maybe I’ll search out one of those hand cranking pasta machines to make the dough come out faster. Oh well but it was pretty fun and way tasty.

Now I just have to look up a good Pierogi recipe since Nathan totally loves them and I’ve never tried them.