Puccino

At Ms. Marmite's on Saturday I cooked the starter of mushroom Ravioli with an onion cappuccino. If found the recipe on caterersearch and it’s by Michael Bedford the chef proprietor of the Chefs Table in Gloucestershire. Click through or see below for the recipe.

I spent the previous week force feeding my flatmates second rate pasta. My pasta machine seemed to have been swallowed by my last place of residence and has not since surfaced. Fortunately by Saturday I had honed the recipe and with the help of Marmites mini pasta machine we were good to go.

I worked out that when making fresh pasta the ratio of egg to flour isn’t as important as I first thought. Unlike pastry where measurements are key pasta dough is refreshingly simple. Mound up the flour and whack in roughly one egg per hundred grams of flour and off you go incorporating the flour gently to start with then with vigor. The eggs kind of welcome only as much flour as they need and just stop when you have the pasta consistency you want – its all in the feel. Make sure it well rested before you roll and kneed like hell till springy.

What was more interesting was the so called cappuccino that I flooded the raviolis with and seemed to go down well. It was smooth, creamy and properly unhealthy.

You have to sweat the onion in loads of butter for ages on low (longer then the recipe suggests) until soft gooey the add in equal parts double cream, milk and stock. Slowly reduce for half an hour, blitz, strain and just heat it up again when needed and blitz to a snazzy froth.

The Basil puree didn’t work as I expected it to. I think a professional grade pacojet would have been useful. But blanch and refresh basil leaves squeeze out as much water as possible then liquidize with some Parmesan and pine kernels. Probably easier to do a massive batch and freeze as it will liquidize better in bulk.

A mushroom filling speaks for itself but stick in anything you want but with the onion froth (calling it a cappuccino is a bit poncy) it works really well.

Will hopefully be producing more stand alone courses at Marmites soon so watch this space…

Ingredients (serves four)

200g pasta dough
1 egg yolk
60g basil purée

For the onion cappuccino
2 onions chopped
100g butter
1/2 pint of double cream
1/2 pint of milk
1/2 pint of stock

For the mushroom filling
oil
18 shrooms chopped coarsely
5 shallots, chopped
50g unsalted butter
1 bunch of flat parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic crushed
Salt and pepper

For the filling, heat oil in a pan until very hot then add the mushrooms and sear for a few minutes. Add the shallots and butter. When the shallots have softened add the parsley, garlic, salt and pepper. Leave to cool.