Oodles of Noodles
"Pasta makes you smart!.... Pasta makes you happy!"
–Faith Willinger, Italian travel and food expert, and cookbook author.
Tom loves a big bowl of noodles with lots of butter and Parmesan and so does his daughter Loretta. That's why "my kid's favorite oodles of noodles" has been on the Dahlia menu forever. After Tom and Jackie's first trip to Italy, Tom became obsessed with the perfectly textured pastas, yellow with the yolks of free-range eggs, that he tasted there. He was no longer happy serving "store-bought" pasta in our restaurants. For the last five years, Martha Francis has been our pasta specialist and pasta queen, making most of the pasta we serve on our menus. Daily, she rolls out great sheets of fine dough and meticulously shapes by hand, or cuts with special rollers, the delicious noodles and filled raviolis that you see at the restaurants.
What's unique about the pastas you make here at the Palace?
The ingredients in all pastas are very basic - just flour, olive oil, eggs and salt. Semolina (a harder wheat flour) is used in many commercial pasta frescas, but we use just regular all-purpose flour, which makes a finer, more tender pasta. Semolina makes handling and storing the pastas a little easier, but it also results in a somewhat coarser product.
What makes pasta "perfect"?
Perfect pasta is thin and delicate, but it still has a little give or texture when you bite into it. It can't be overcooked; our pastas need only 1-2 minutes in boiling water or they will disintegrate. Luckily, our cooks and chefs are very skilled and know just by the look of cooking pasta when it's almost ready.
How do you decide what fillings or kinds of pasta to make?
I work with the chefs to decide upon something seasonal, or to try out new ideas they come up with. It's important that there be balance between the type of pasta we use, and the fillings or sauces that we pair them with. The fillings can't be too coarse, which can cause air pockets and breakage in the pasta, or too wet and gooey, which will prevent the the pasta from holding its shape. Sometimes we will make a flavored pasta, such as a saffron or dill pasta, because they match well with fish dishes. And for the autumn menus, we will make heartier pastas using whole wheat, buckwheat flours and even whole grain mustard in our doughs.
On the restaurant menus you'll see Martha's paparadelle ("papa's noodle"), a very wide ribbon pasta noodle and tagliatelle, a noodle that is a little thinner than a fettucini noodle. A dish that has been on our menu at Palace Kitchen since we opened is plin, which is Italian for "pinch". These little tender pillows of pasta are filled with a mixture of milk braised pork, chard and Emmenthaler cheese, then pinched at their ends to hold them together. Tom and Jackie discovered plin (or it discovered them) during trips to Piedmont, Italy. Tom learned to make plin under the expert training of the grandmotherly owner of the B&B where they were staying. In exchange for a lesson on how to make her delicious pasta, Tom explained how to use the waffle iron sent from a sister who had emigrated to New York. We hope the Italians are enjoying their morning waffles as much as we enjoy our Piedmontese plin.
