Linguine with tomato-cream sauce and truffles

This is another recipe that came from a cooking class with my fiends at Truffle Shuffle. You can cut the paste in different width – linguine, pappardelle.

serves: 4 difficulty: medium prep time: 2 hrs

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup 00 flour (which it Italian flour that you can find in most good grocery stores. All purpose flour would also do)
1 cup semolina flour
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tbs + 1/4 cup olive oil
1 jar Oakville Grocery Tomato Sauce (or 1 pint crushed tomatoes)
1 shallot, finely minced
1/4 head of fennel finely minced

Preparation

First make the pasta. Combine the 00 flour and the semolina flour together in a mixing bowl. Stir together to combine.

Remove 1/2 cup of the flour mix and set to the side for bench flour. Lay the flour out on a large cutting board or counter top. Make a well in the center of the flour.

Whisk the eggs and yolks with a fork. Add eggs, yolks, and olive oil to the well.

Using a fork star slowly incorporating flour into the whisked eggs. while being careful not to breach the walls of the well. Mix the rest of the flour together to create a shaggy dough.

Scrape any flour that has stuck onto the surface and mix it in with the dough. Form the dough in to a ball.

Start kneading the dough by folding in two, turning 90 degrees, applying pressure with the palm of your hand down and away from you; folding in two, turning 90 degrees, applying pressure…. Keep kneading for at least 10 min or up until the dough become silky smooth. Because we are using semolina flour which is coarser, it will take more kneading to get there. In this case, I kneaded the dough for 20 min. Once it is smooth, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for at least 30 min or better – a full hour.

Once the dough has rested, you can roll out and cut the pasta. First split the dough in 3 parts; work with 1/3 and keep the remaining 2/3 wrapped in plastic wrap.

I use a very simple Italian pasta maker with a detachable electric motor.

For videos on how to roll and cut pasta, refer to the squid ink pasta post.

Flatten the dough between your hands so that it starts forming a pancake – about 1/2 inch thick. Adjust the pasta machine rollers on the widest gauge (on mine that’s 0), and turn on the pasta machine (if electric). Run the dough pancake through it 2-3 times. At that point you will have an elliptical sheet of dough. Fold the narrow ends of the ellipse so that the width of the pasta sheet is only slightly less than the width of the pasta machine.

Run the sheet through the machine couple more times. The goal is for the pasta sheet to be as wide as the width of the machine. Once you have achieved that, start tightening the gauge of the rollers (on my machine the numbers go up) and run the sheet through the past machine couple of times at each gauge. You may have to dust the pasta sheet lightly with flour. I go all the way to gauge 5 for linguine.

Attach the cutting attachment to the machine, and move the motor to the linguine setting. Run each pasta sheet through the cutter, and voila! you have linguine.

Next make the sauce.

Fill a large pot with water and bring to the boil. Heat the remaining olive oil in a large sauce pan over medium-low heat. Add the finely minced shallot and fennel to the pan and stir to combine, season with salt. Stew the vegetables over medium-low heat until soft.

Add the tomato sauce to the pan and reduce for about a minute, or until the tomato has reduced by about¼ by volume. Add the cream to the pan and bring to the boil. Adjust the seasoning with Balinese Truffle Salt, set aside.

Then you are ready to cook and finish the pasta.

Season the large pot of water with salt, bring back to the boil, and add the pasta. Cook the pasta for 30 seconds – until it floats to the top. Drain the pasta but reserve l/2 cup of the water in which you cooked the pasta, and add it to the pan with the sauce. Add the pasta to the sauce, and cook the pasta in the sauce over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 2 minutes.