Love in the kitchen on Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day is a perfect time for a special dinner with your nearest and dearest. You may want to consider staying home and working together to create a delectable and heartwarming meal. Since I do most of the cooking, it’s a real treat when my husband joins me in the preparations. The camaraderie of having him as my kitchen companion is a delight. It is especially gratifying when we make something a little out of the ordinary.
I received pasta-making attachments for my stand mixer for Christmas, so my husband and I decided to collaborate on a pre-holiday Valentine’s dinner for this article.
Homemade pasta can be made entirely by hand. You can mix the flour and eggs on a flat surface, such as a clean counter. You knead the dough by hand until it is smooth and elastic. You roll it to a desired thinness with a rolling pin, and then cut out the strips of fettuccine with a sharp knife.
However, a counter top handcranked pasta machine or stand mixer pasta attachments make short work of pasta. And, although one can do all the steps alone, it is even nicer to have two people handling the steps of rolling, kneading and cutting the pasta. And if you happen to also have a food processor, making pasta is truly quick and easy. From ingredients to dough to pasta, it all takes place in a matter of minutes.
We were eager to plunge right into pasta making. For our dish, we chose to make a versatile egg pasta using Italian superfine “00” flour I happened to have on hand. (But don’t worry. If you don’t have Italian flour, you can still get respectable results with regular unbleached flour.)
We measured flour, eggs and an extra yolk into the food processor fitted with the steel blade. While the machine was running, my husband slowly poured in a bit of water. The flour and eggs quickly coalesced into a soft dough ball. We removed the dough, sprinkled it with flour, and covered it with plastic wrap to rest.
When the dough was ready to be put through the machine, we set the kneading roller to the widest setting, and cut the dough into three pieces for ease of handling. Working with one piece at a time, we gently pushed the dough through the first roller. Watching the dough go from a ball to a sheet is exciting. We laid the sheet on the counter, dusted it with flour, and folded it into thirds. Then we put the dough through the roller again. We repeated this process five or six times, until the dough was glossy and elastic.
When we were done kneading the dough, we reduced the roller thickness level by one, and put the dough through again. Each time, we reduced the setting, and the dough got a little thinner and a little longer. We were surprised by how much fun we had taking turns feeding the dough through the pasta machine.
Once the dough reached the desired thinness — in our case, the #6 setting on our machine for thin fettuccine — we switched to the dough cutter. For this recipe, we chose to use the wider fettuccine cutter, rather than the thinner linguine cutter. Because the sheet of dough was quite long, it was helpful to cut it in half before placing the straight edge against the cutter. We caught the cut pasta just below the cutting rollers and then draped it over a pasta rack. (Or, if you don’t have a rack, gather the pasta into a nest, dredge with flour, and rest on a parchment covered baking pan or tray.) Then, we repeated the process with the other pieces of dough.
For Valentine’s Day, a special occasion sauce for the pasta is a must. My husband loves my mushroom cream sauce. And luckily, cream sauce is not only delicious, it’s also deceptively easy to make. We wanted a heartier entree, so expanding the recipe with sautéed chicken and leeks before adding the mushrooms and cream made the end result amazing. And as a special touch, we threw in one of his favorite vegetables — fresh peas.
After prepping the vegetables and gathering the ingredients, we were ready to start. We heated butter and olive oil in a large, highsided pan and lightly browned chunks of boneless chicken thighs. We then removed them and set the chicken aside on a plate. Into the pan went chopped leeks, then sliced mushrooms. We deglazed the pan with a combination of cognac and white wine and added the rest of the seasonings. We returned the chicken to the pan, covered and cooked it over low heat until the chicken was done, about 10 minutes. We turned off the stove and moved on to the peas.
Fresh peas are wonderful, and they are readily available. But to make sure they are perfectly cooked and keep their beautiful bright green color, it is a good idea to partly cook them ahead by steaming or microwaving for a couple of minutes. Plunge them into ice water, cool and drain them. You will add them to the pan later when you add the cream.
When you are ready to move on to dinner, bring a large pot of water to a rapid boil, add a tablespoon of salt, and cook the pasta for anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes. Taste a piece periodically to ensure the pasta is soft but still firm — perfectly al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, finish your sauce. Gently and thoroughly reheat the chicken mixture. Add the peas and the cream, and simmer for another 5 minutes or so to develop all the flavors. You can both taste the dish and agree on which seasonings, if any, need adjusting.
When your pasta is cooked, save a cup of the pasta water, then drain the pasta. Do not rinse. Add the cooked fettuccine to the pan, mixing well until the sauce coats every strand and the chicken and vegetables are well distributed. If the sauce is too thick, add reserved pasta water, a little at a time, until the creamy sauce clings nicely to the pasta but still “moves.”
I like serving the pasta in bowls to capture every drop of sauce. And on the side, a lemony arugula salad and maybe some good bread. No cheese is necessary, as the cream sauce is quite savory.
This rich and decadent pasta also happens to go very nicely with a glass of champagne. So clink glasses with your kitchen companion, and drink a toast to love.