Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Winter fettucini

Winter pesto, according to sources, is a kind of pesto that Italian people eat in the winter, when basil is scarce but parsley is plentiful. It has a spiciness and bitterness that stave off the winter chill and fortify the body, and a vibrant green -- brighter than basil pesto's often yellowish hue -- that relieve the color-starved eyes of winter and prevent macular degeneration. This isn't that recipe, though, because I don't have a blender.

What this is, is a close approximation.


First, make some egg noodles as described previously, cutting them into fettucini-sized strips. This time, I don't know what I did differently, but after half an hour in the fridge, the dough was extremely tough. It took about ten minutes of vigorous rolling with a pint glass just to get the whole thing flat enough to cover the cutting board. So the noodles were thicker than previous times, but this turned out to be a happy accident -- they sported a welcoming texture.

Actually, one thing I did for the first time was add black pepper to the eggs before I beat them into dough, but I'm not quite ready to believe that black pepper contains dough-toughening enzymes.

For the sauce, take a bunch of parsley and a couple cloves of garlic, and chop them as finely as you can / have the patience for. Remember, the idea is to approximate a blender.

Take the shredded parsley and garlic, and put them in a bowl with about half a cup of olive oil. Grate a lot of parmesan cheese into it (a third of a cup, maybe), and add salt to taste, mixing vigorously.

When the fettucini is done, mix it with the pesto like so:


Special thanks to Deborah Spenser for teaching me that winter pesto is a thing.

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