Results tagged noodles from David Lebovitz

I have to admit, I’ve gotten a bit slack and have been buying dried pasta for the past few years. There’s nothing wrong with store-bought pasta – I’ve become fond of the whole wheat pasta spirals I get at my natural foods store, tossed with greens, garlic, and olive oil – but I was recently at the home of a friend and while we were talking over wine, he pulled out a disk of dough, quickly rolled it, and put together a simple lasagna with those just-made noodles. It was so good, and made me realize that I’d forgotten how good fresh pasta is. And it’s not difficult at all to make.

Unlike pastry and bread doughs, pasta dough isn’t very fussy. You don’t really need a machine to shape the pasta, but a pasta roller really helps and it’s one of life’s great pleasure when you pull that final cut of the pasta strands out of the machine and drop them into a pot of boiling water. I have an attachment for my stand mixer, although the small hand-cranked machines are inexpensive and do a good job, too. You can handroll pasta with a rolling pin, but be prepared for a bit of a challenge if you want the dough really thin.

Continue Reading How to Make Fresh Pasta…

I realized that a little while back I posted some pictures about my visit to Les Crayères, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the Champagne region, about an hour from Paris. But I never wrote about the meal or my experience. Since I’ve been planning another trip back—hopefully soon, it prompted me to share my lunch, at last.

Perhaps some people coming to Paris want to take a day trip out of the city. Or for those of use who live here, it’s a nice break away from the hectic city life and away from the stress of it all. (Especially after tangling with those Monoprix cashiers.) If you fall into either of those categories, a swift, new TGV train will whisk you from the Gare de l’Est and right into the heart of Champagne country in less than an hour. And before you know it, you’ll be sipping sparkling wine in high-style, surrounded by trees and servers waiting on you dressed in sharp suits, with a bottle of bubbly always ready and waiting.

Let’s just get this out of the way right now: I love Champagne. When I worked at a well-known restaurant, we had a rule (which, admittedly, we made up on the spot one evening), that every night that we did over a hundred diners, we’d open a bottle of Champagne from the cellar for us.

Continue Reading Les Crayères…

I’ve had all three cookbooks from Moro in London stacked up in my apartment for about a year, and haven’t made anything from them. They’re very personal cookbooks, the recipes and photos invoking a time and place, with the food arcing between Moorish cooking and the foods of North Africa, along with the Middle East, nodding toward sustainability. I keep picking them up, leafing through them and looking at the lush, yet unfussy photos of food, but never tried any of the recipes.

Their most recent book, Moro East, was the result of their growing their own food in their “allotment”; a place on the outskirts of London where 81 people tended their own gardens and foraged for foods. The book begins with the sad warning that by the time readers pick up the book, the bulldozers will have plowed the century-old gardens under to make way for the upcoming Olympics, in order to create a pathway between two stadiums.

Continue Reading Moro’s Noodle Pudding…

A few weeks ago, I went to hear Alec Lobrano speak and read from his terrific book, Hungry for Paris, and someone asked if there were ethnic restaurants listed in the book. He replied that he didn’t include them, because most visitors coming to Paris probably are looking for French food, so that’s what he concentrated on.

He’s right, of course. Lots of visitors do come here specifically to dine on classic French fare, but I also know that there are a certain number of visitors that eventually tire of so much meat and rich food, and are willing to explore some of the more unusual and diverse food available in a multi-cultural city like Paris. I also think that Americans (at least this one) are hard-wired to eat ethnic foods, namely anything Asian. Living in California, sushi, Korean bbq, and bun bo are pretty much a part of my normal dietary fare.

Since I arrived in Paris, I’ve noticed a strong uptick in the quality of Asian restaurants here. And I’ve also noticed there’s much more of an appreciation of them, too.

Continue Reading Les Pates Vivantes…