It’s safe to say that unless I hit the internet blogging jackpot and finally get to cash in on marthaandtom.com, I’m never going to own the recently-published Modernist Cuisine. $600 for a cookbook is just a little beyond this blogger’s budget. It’s a shame, because everything I’ve seen about the book (eGullet has some of the best coverage including a Q&A with the authors) indicates that it will be an immensely useful — not to mention beautiful — reference, even if you don’t go in for the immersion circulators, centrifuges, c-vaps and other gadgets favored by the Modernist Cuisine laboratory.

Fortunately for me and anybody else that doesn’t have $600 burning a hole in their apron pocket, this book is generating enough buzz and discussion online that some of the key findings are becoming available to the rest of us. In another post on eGullet, Chris Amirault introduced the modernist pasta, and was kind enough to post the full recipe:

• 100 g ’00′ flour (100%)
• 1 g xanthan gum
• 2.5 g salt
• 9 g water
• 56.7 g egg yolk
• 10.7 g oil

Xanthan gum is something I more expect to see printed somewhere near the bottom of a package-side ingredient list than a pasta recipe. The Modernists claim that xanthan gives fresh pasta a chewier texture closer to that of dried pasta. As it turns out Xanthan gum is a popular ingredient among people with gluten intolerances — it adds structure and enhances texture in gluten-less baked goods — so obtaining a small baggy of the magic white powder was no problem — they sell it in bulk at the co-op.

While xanthan gum stands out in the recipe as a weird ingredient, far crazier was the amount of eggs called for. I tripled the base recipe to produce about a pound of pasta (539.7 g or 1.2#), which meant I needed 170.1 grams of egg yolks. Not really knowing how much an egg yolk weighs, I set a bowl on my scale and got cracking. Ten eggs later and the scale was at 168 g. Ten eggs! With the egg I mixed into the ravioli filling, this dinner took a full banker’s dozen. Anybody have a good recipe that calls for ten egg whites?

I mixed the dough in my food processor; it came together extremely dry and crumbly. Ordinarily I would have added a little more water, but the Modernist measurements being so precise — down to the tenth of a gram — I stuck with them.

The dryness was even more apparent as I tried to work the dough through my pasta machine. Even after resting it was extremely difficult to get the dough to pass through the widest setting on my hand-cranked machine. As I worked it through the progressively thinner settings, the dough became jagged on the edges and appeared brittle.

In spite of these difficulties, once the pasta was rolled the advantages of the xanthan gum started to become apparent. Normally, after rolling and cutting pasta I go into paranoid mode, spreading copious amounts of flour to try to keep all the strands separated. I usually break out the pasta tree. But with the Modernist pasta, no tree was necessary: this pasta will not stick together. I was cutting circles out of the dough to form ravioli, but rather than carefully single-layering them on a sheet pan with cornstarch on either side as I might do with regular pasta, I unceremoniously dumped them in a pile. No sticking! To tempt fate I stacked the discs into an orderly stack — still no sticking. I started to become concerned that it wouldn’t be possible to make two pieces of pasta to stick together around a ravioli filling, but water applied directly to the surface finally caused the dough to adhere.

Due to it’s non-stickiness, this dough recipe seems ideal for long shapes — provided I can address the ragged edges.

The real point of the xanthan gum, though, is not that it makes the dough easy or difficult to work with, but that it improves the texture of the finished pasta. The fair way to do this would of course have been a double-blind tasting, with ravioli made with my standard Cook’s Illustrated recipe (2 cups flour, 3 eggs, a tablespoon or so of water) put up against the new competitor. But after the several hours and many eggs already expended in this effort, I didn’t have it in me. Given those many hours I of course really wanted this experiment to have been worth it, so take my observations with a grain of salt, but the texture of this pasta really did seem better than what I am used to. After cooking in just-less-than-boiling for three and a half minutes it was a silky, smooth al dente, with none of the eggy springiness I often get from fresh pasta.

The question that will be raised with all these Modernist Cuisine innovations is, is it worth it? Is the sometimes very marginal gain in quality worth the sometimes extra effort and expense, the high price tag of the book itself not least among these? Who would make this burger? Or in the case of this pasta, is it worth the sore arms and the egg-spenditure? After one attempt at this recipe, I’m not ready to decide, but I am at least intrigued enough to try it again.

Meyer Lemon & Artichoke Ravioli

Filling:

• 1 cup minced artichoke hearts (I used a 14oz can, drained)
• 1 cup whole milk ricotta
• ¾ cup finely grated parmesan cheese
• Zest and juice from one meyer lemon
• 1 egg
• 1 clove of garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
• 1 T minced chives
• Salt and pepper to taste

1 # of your favorite fresh pasta

Sauce:

• 3 T butter
• Juice and zest of one meyer lemon
• 1 c cream

Mix all the filling ingredients in a small bowl until evenly distributed and set aside. Roll out the pasta into thin sheets and cut out as many 2″ circles as you can (I used a drinking glass). Keep cut pasta covered to prevent it from drying out. Divide the cut rounds into two even groups (tops and bottoms) and lay the bottoms out across a work surface. Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each round. Working with a few ravioli at a time, wet the edges of the bottom circle with water and cover the filling with a top. Pinch the edges of the two rounds together to seal.

For the sauce, melt the butter in a skillet and add the cream and lemon juice. Simmer for a few minutes to reduce slightly, then cover while preparing the pasta.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the pasta. Adjust heat so the water does not return to a rolling boil. Cook until pasta is al dente, about 3 minutes with the Modernist pasta recipe outlined above.

Carefully drain ravioli and toss with sauce and lemon zest. Serve hot, preferably in warmed bowls.

Not three hours after Martha published the news yesterday that we had taken delivery of a winter-blues-banishing box of limes and Meyer lemons from the good people at FruitShare, we received an email from one of their marketing people thanking us for the post. Lest you think something untoward has taken place behind your innocent blog-reading back, dear blog-reader, let me assure you that we bought our fruit share fair and square. Martha didn’t receive any kind of solicitation or compensation for posting about it — at least not that she has told me about!

In addition to some nice words about the blog — flattery is the surest route to any blogger’s heart — our fruity correspondent included some recipes, and, in a change from most food marketing, the recipes actually looked pretty good. I was particularly drawn to the Meyer lemon pesto, since I am a fan of off-beat pestos. After work, with neither plans nor ingredient shopping trips made for dinner, I found myself making Meyer lemon pesto sooner than expected.

Martha was glad I did; she loved the bright lemon flavor. I personally found it a little bitter from the pith, but it did get me thinking of warmer climates.

This recipe is basically the same as the one I received in the email, except I substituted parsley for basil and sunflower seeds for pine nuts — all in the interest of avoiding a trip to the store.

Meyer Lemon Pesto

• One Meyer lemon, cut into pieces and seeded
• ½ cup parsley leaves
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 2 T toasted sunflower seeds
• ¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated
• 3 T olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Process first four ingredients in food processor until ground. Transfer to a small bowl; stir in cheese and oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

We ate it over fresh fettuccine; it would be a great accompaniment to a white-fleshed fish, as well.

Kushari is one of those foods. In Cairo, you don’t have to walk far to find a kushari stand, but the complexity of the operation — and these places only serve the one dish — is a clue to its unsuitability for adaptation at home. After indicating just how much kushari you’re interested in eating you can watch your bowl head down the line where it is filled from several pots, one man to a pot: rice, noodles, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions and tomato sauce.

Yes, this is really a dish with both rice and pasta, lentils and chickpeas. It’s a starch-lover’s dream, packed with affordable calories — which partially explains its popularity in Egypt. Preparing these ingredients to all be ready simultaneously is something the many employees of the kushari joint have down to a science. Doing it at home, unless you have a ready brigade of helpers and extra stove space, is a challenge. And for the humble result , you are better off just hitting up the local kushari place.

Unfortunately, outside of Egypt such restaurants are rare. (I did once locate kushari in Minneapolis, a special at the Lyndale Grill and Grocery.) So for those of you with a craving that can’t be satisfied and some patience, here’s what I did: my stove has four burners; I used three of them (the fourth being taken up by a pot of old frying oil that I am too lazy to clean). On one, I started a pot of rice. At 30 minutes, this is one of the longest cooking items. In a pan on another burner, I started caramelizing some onions. In a large pot on the third burner, I brought water and lentils to a boil.

After 20 minutes, the lentils were toothsome and ready to come out. But don’t drain them! You need that hot lentil water! I used a mesh strainer to fish out as many lentils as possible from the water and placed them in a covered bowl to stay warm. After bringing the water back to a boil, I added in broken vermicelli.

In the meantime, the onions had become suitably browned. Transferring them to a small bowl, I quickly wiped out the skillet and began heating olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes until they were fragrant. To this, I added a can of tomato puree (actually a can of pureed diced tomatoes, but buying them pre-pureed would have been easier) and let the tomato sauce simmer. Soon, the vermicelli was within a minute of being done so I added a can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed, to the cooking pasta in order to warm them. If you wanted to make this dish more complicated, you could start with dried chickpeas.

The assembly of kushari proceeds in layers: a base of rice, topped with pasta and chickpeas, topped with lentils, garnished with fried onions and finally covered in tomato sauce. Whenever I ate this in Egypt it was served with a thin, vinegary hot sauce which I simulated at home by blending a little sriracha into a lot of rice vinegar.

1990s Pasta

Forgive me if I’m mixing up decades here, but it seems like the 90s was the time when we everyone was eating sun-dried tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, arugula and penne. Well, as it happens Martha and I keep all these things on hand. One thing I wish we kept on hand that we don’t is pine nuts, which would have been great in this and also very in keeping with that 90s theme. The vinegar was a last second edition when I saw how muddy the tomato liquid was going to make the pasta look; it brightened the flavors up nicely.

• ½ cup sun-dried tomatoes (the dry kind, not the kind packed in oil)
• 3 garlic cloves, shaved thin on a mandoline
• ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• About half a bag of baby arugula (4 or 5 cups, maybe)
• 1 14oz can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• ½ cup chicken stock
• Salt and pepper
• 1# penne
• 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

Cover the tomatoes in 2 cups of boiling water and allow to soak 15 minutes, until slightly rehydrated and tender. Strain the tomato soaking liquid into a small saucepan and reserve tomatoes. Bring tomato liquid to a boil and allow to reduce by half. Set aside.

Bring enough water to cook the pasta to a boil in a large stockpot. Place garlic slices, pepper flakes and olive oil in a large, cold skillet and heat over medium heat until garlic cloves brown. Stir in arugula and allow to wilt. Add tomatoes, beans, reduced tomato soaking liquid and chicken stock to skillet and bring to simmer. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cook the penne al dente and drain. Return to stockpot and toss with sauce, vinegar and cheese. Serve, topping with additional cheese as desired.

Moroccan Parsnips

I’m not sure if they grow parsnips in Morocco, but we sure do grow them in Minnesota, and for some reason I’m always 1.) buying tons of them and 2.) putting them into bland, earthy concoctions. So I turned to a warmer, spicier place to help get through this lingering late farmers market staple.

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 small bunch parsnips, peeled and cut into 3″ long, thin pieces
• 1 small onion, sliced thin
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp cayenne
• ¼ tsp paprika
• ½ tsp cumin
• ½ tsp coriander
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• ½ cup chicken stock
• 1 14oz can chickpeas
• ½ tsp zest plus ¼ cup juice from one orange
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp harissa
• ¼ cup minced parsley

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add parsnips and allow to brown. Stir, browning on other sides. Transfer parsnips to a bowl and set aside.

Return skillet to medium heat. Add onions and cook until edges start to brown. Add garlic, spices and salt and cook until fragrant, just a few seconds. Add chicken stock, chickpeas, parsnips and orange zest along with enough water to half cover the parsnips. Partially cover the skillet and simmer until the parsnips are completely tender — about 15 minutes for me, but it depends on the age and toughness of the parsnips.

When parsnips are ready, turn off the heat and stir in the harissa, orange juice, vinegar and parsley. Taste for seasoning. Serve with cous cous.

I think the original recipe was published in the New York Times but I can’t locate it online. In any case, I’ve cooked this without the recipe enough times that I’m willing to claim it for my own.

Penne with Blue Cheese and Broccoli

• 6 oz blue cheese, crumbled
• 4 Tbsp butter
• 1 clove of garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
• Black pepper
• Red pepper flakes
• Salt
• 2 medium heads of broccoli, florets separated, stems discarded or reserved for other use
• 1# penne

Bring plenty of salted water to a boil in a large stockpot. Place blue cheese, butter, garlic, and salt, pepper and red pepper to taste in a large mixing bowl. Place the bowl over the stockpot while it is heating to soften the cheese and butter. When water boils, add pasta. After about 4 minutes have passed, add the broccoli. When pasta is done to your liking, drain pasta and broccoli, reserving some of the water to adjust the consistency of the sauce. Toss pasta and broccoli with butter-bue cheese mixture. Adjust seasoning and serve.