Day forty one

What is better - fresh pasta or dried one?

Culinary Fundamentals is my favorit subject so far. We are back to the kitchen and as promised, our production is getting bigger and bigger. Today each team prepared different sauce (our team made pesto). Individual production was fresh egg pasta, mayonnaise, and Pomme Anna.

Fresh egg pasta was delicious - very rich, very silky. There were a lot of eggs (4 eggs per 1 pound flour). The pasta cooks literally in a couple minutes (depends on the thickness of your pasta, how thick you roll it). The big differences between fresh and dried pasta are:
the texture (dry is al-dente, fresh is silky and smooth), cooking time (dry cooks longer), shelf life (dry almost indefinite, fresh - has to be covered to prevent from drying and kept into refrigerator may be for a couple of days, or in freezer), ability to introduce extra flavor in pasta (none for dry, unlimited for fresh).

In order to make it you need pasta machine to roll the dough. You may use roller at home, but it won't be so easy and fast.

Pesto sauce is quite simple and very versatile. You adjust it according to your taste.
Makes about 1 qt/960 mL 
8 oz/227 g basil leaves 
4 oz/113 g toasted pine nuts 
6 garlic cloves, mashed to a paste 
1 tbsp/10 g salt 12 fl oz/360 mL olive oil 
8 oz/227 g grated Parmesan 
Salt, as needed 
Method.
Rinse the basil leaves well, dry thoroughly, and coarsely chop. Transfer them to a food processor or use a mortar and pestle. 
Grind the basil, pine nuts, garlic, and salt together, adding the oil gradually to form a thick paste. Stir in the cheese and add salt as needed. 
The sauce is ready to use now, or it may be refrigerated for later use. 

NOTE: Blanching the basil in boiling salted water will help prevent the pesto from oxidizing during storage and make the color more pronounced.
This is a great note and we did accordingly. So the color was wonderful, green and very fresh. What we also did, when we used our sauce we added lemon juice to a final product. Do not add acid in pesto sauce as it will discolour it. 
Also, better to use blender, and not food processor. Blendes will give you a better and a finer texture.

Another dish we made today was Pomme Anna. Very famous dish and very elegant (when done properly).
Makes 10 servings 
4 lb/1.81 kg chef’s potatoes 
2½ fl oz/75 mL melted clarified butter, or as needed 
Salt, as needed 
Ground black pepper, as needed 
Method:
Scrub, peel, and trim the potatoes into uniform cylinders. 
Thinly slice them using a mandoline or electric slicer (or knife, it works fine). 
Liberally brush a sautoir or cast-iron skillet with butter. Arrange the potato slices in concentric rings. Lightly brush each layer with butter and season with salt and pepper. 
Cover the potatoes and cook them on the stovetop over medium heat until the bottom layer is brown, about 8 minutes. 
Turn the potato cake upside down and brown the other side, about 6 to 8 minutes. Place the pan in a 400°F/204°C oven and bake until the potatoes are tender, 30 to 35 minutes. 
Drain off the excess butter and turn the potato cake out onto a platter. 
Slice into servings and serve immediately

Today was also my first day as a team sous chef. Mostly it went allright. As always there is space for improvement. Will see what will happened tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a crazy day, we have eggs cookery....