HOMEMADE burrata & pea PASTA
Though pasta is an Italian dish, we cook it quite often here in the French countryside. We have fresh eggs available all the time as we have our chickens walking around the vineyards daily. All you need for a good pasta dough is flour & eggs, here’s the recipe.
Making pasta dough
You need approximately 100 g of flour per egg (preferably pizza flour or “00” -flour). With 1 egg you can make 2 small pastas or 1 really big one, with 2 eggs you can make perfectly three pasta dishes.
Weigh the flour in a bowl and break the eggs in the middle of the pile. Start by breaking the eggs in the bowl with a spoon, then slowly start to mix the flour in. Mix by hand so well that the dough becomes a grainy, tight ball. Remove from the bowl and knead by hand for 10-15 minutes against a cutting board or a kitchen counter. In my experience, hand-kneaded dough always turns out better than machine-made, so use your muscles!
Wrap the dough tightly in a cling film (not to let it dry out) and let it rest at least for 1 hour in a fridge. Then start rolling your pasta dough with a rolling pin. No need to do all at once, you can divide the dough into several pieces. If you have a pasta machine, start feeding it through the widest setting. Continue to put the pasta through the machine, folding it every now and then, and then narrowing the rollers little by little until you have a smooth sheet of pasta. If you don’t have a machine - no problem! Just do this with a rolling pin. Keep the pasta in sheets, until you’ve rolled all of your dough.
Then finally cut the pasta into the form of your liking, linguine, tagliatelle or pappardelle. Dust in a little bit of flour and set aside or hang until dry (about an hour). You can do all this in advance, store the pasta in a sealed container in the fridge and use within a couple of days.
Burrata, peas & mint pasta for 2-3 people
Pasta dough of 2 eggs (see before)
150 g green peas (ideally fresh, but frozen work well)
30 g butter
3 shallots
1 burrata
chopped mint
salt & pepper
Chop the shallots and place into a pan with butter. Fry them on medium-heat until golden. Add the peas and keep the temperature low. You want to warm up the peas but not cook them (especially the frozen ones can be easily overcooked and they turn darker).
Cook the pasta in a heavily salted water for 2-3 minutes until al dente / nicely cooked, but not overcooked. Drain, but keep a little bit of pasta water. Add a few spoonfuls of the salty water into the peas. Mix the pasta with the peas, season with salt flakes and black pepper. Careful with the salt, it might not be needed if you’ve added the pasta water into the mix.
Divide the pasta on plates, add a slice of burrata on top and sprinkle with chopped mint on top. Serve with a nice, round white wine such as Le Fruit Enchanté from our natural wine line, Charivari.
