Kitchen wisdom
A salty solution for perfect pasta, and a kernel of hope for nut allergies
Q
I have been experimenting with making pasta from scratch but none of the recipes I find, and none of the demonstrations I have seen on television, involve adding salt to the dough. Why is this, as I find the resulting pasta bland and uninspiring? GB A
For the answer to this one, I turned to chef and pasta expert Theo Randall, author of Pasta ( Ebury £26). “Adding salt makes the pasta go black,” he explained. “You get little black dots developing in the dough, while it rests before rolling. That’s why the pasta is seasoned instead by cooking it in lots of really salty water. For four portions of pasta, use five litres of boiling water and one heaped teaspoon of sea salt. It sounds like a lot, but you won’t actually be eating all that salt. Most of it will stay in the water, and be thrown away after cooking.” Don’t forget to keep a cupful of cooking water. It’s useful to add to the sauce, to make the perfect consistency to coat the pasta. You can find Randall’s full pasta recipe at theorandall.com.
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Q
A number of my family members have nut allergies, and many cake recipes contain ground almonds. What is a good substitute?
JM
AIt depends on the cake. Ground nuts ( touted as an alternative to flour, particularly for coeliacs) have a different make up from almost all other flourtype ingredients. While 100g wheat flour, rice flour or semolina has around 1- 2g fat and more than 70g carbohydrate, ground almonds have 54g fat and just 4g carbohydrate. Coconut flour is somewhere in between, with around 15g fat per 100g. None of the alternatives are close to the richness of nuts.
If there are a lot of ground almonds in the recipe (more almonds than flour), it’s best to look for an alternative recipe. But one calling for less than half the weight of flour in almonds may be worth tinkering with. Semolina will give you some of the faintly nubbly texture, so try 80g semolina for every 100g ground almonds, and an extra 20g of butter or other fat.
Q
Further to your advice on peeling chestnuts ( Ask Xanthe, Dec 13), can I make another suggestion? Carefully slash five nuts, then microwave them for one minute. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, they will be easy to peel with tip of a small sharp knife.
AS
A
Thank you! I tried this and it worked a treat. My large chestnuts needed one and a half minutes, and it was helpful to be able to cook a few at a time.