As you may have read, we spent a long and wonderful full day in an immersion cooking class in Tuscany earlier this month. Here’s a link to the school – highly recommended.

Here’s a basic but wonderful recipe for #vegan pasta. Chef Luciano was amazing – having created real recipes for #vegan people – that are beautiful, functional, and delicious.

Interesting note that he says (as does the school cookbook) “Both fresh and dried pasta should be cooked ‘al dente’, tender, but chewy. Many people overcook their pasta and don’t put enough (if any!) salt in the water.”

I think I’m guilty of overcooking pasta…

The recipe is simple.

4 servings –
400 grams semolina flour
150 g water
1 tsp vinegar
1 tb soy or other milk
1 tb starch (potato, corn, whatever)
4 tb white wine (optional)
pinch of salt

The book calls for assembling the pasta dough on the wooden work surface by building a mound then making a well and incorporating the ingredients. It advises to gradually incorporate flour from the sides until well combined.

From a functional perspective, you can also do this in a glass bowl with a wooden spoon, I think. But we’ll try both ways and pick a favorite.

Then with the heel of your hand, ken the dough by pushing it down and away from you and turning repeatedly. If it sticks, use a dough scraper and perhaps add some flour. Continue for 15-20 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Gather the dough into a ball, the proceed to prepare using whatever pasta creation technique or tools or machines you like. We’ll post more on some of those… soon.

It’s simple.

It’s wonderful.

It’s fun.

It’s delicious.

You can use this recipe to make linguini, ravioli (our choice), spaghetti, angel hair, or most anything else you’d like.

We’ll post some info on some of the ingenious (and ancient) tools we learned to use – and some modern ones. Thanks to Amazon – our home kitchen was well equipped by the time we got home to the US.

Plated and amazing... our Ravioli.

Plated and amazing… our Ravioli.

Cooking with the mushroom sauce...

Cooking with the mushroom sauce…

Chef Luciano hard at work showing us how it's done.

Chef Luciano hard at work showing us how it’s done.

Boiling our Ravioli

Boiling our Ravioli

Ravioli!  Hand pressed!

Ravioli! Hand pressed!

Preparing the pasta with the Atlas 150.

Preparing the pasta with the Atlas 150.

Patrick hand pressing ravioli

Patrick hand pressing ravioli