And I'm back! After a crazy couple of holiday weeks traveling all over the East Coast and gaining 15 pounds, I am happy to inform you all that I have returned and am ready to ruin all of your weight-related New Years resolutions! To kick things off, I made some hot sauce pasta dough!
You may think to yourself, "o_0 ?!?!?!". Well, I have partnered with Tabanero to develop recipes incorporating their products, and this was my first attempt (expect many many more in the coming weeks). I wanted to initially stray from Mexican fare, so I naturally gravitated to Italian, and the results were surprisingly well-received. The texture was perfect, but I had to make it about 1/2 mm thicker than usual. Otherwise the dough became a little slimy after cooking. I paired this pasta with some lemony zucchini in an effort to keep things plain so that the flavor of the pasta would really shine through. Then I tossed in some grated Parmesan and black pepper and the dish was great. The hot sauce flavor was very subtle, but definitely added a spicy vinegary punch to the dish.
Tabanero currently produces three flavors of hot sauce (Original Picante, Extra Hot, and Agave Sweet and Spicy). This week I experimented with the Extra Hot and was thrilled with the results. It is spicy in a mellow way, and if refrigerated and then added to hot food, it actually serves as a cooling agent in my opinion. It definitely makes whatever it's put on much more bright and refreshing. It serves as a nice alternative to my wife's sworn favorite Tapatio, which is much smokier and acidic, and a little too spicy for me on a hot day. With Tabanero Extra Hot, you can drown food in the sauce and not burn your throat off while still tasting all of the deep and subtle flavors it adds to the dish; This is a quality I always search for in a good hot sauce. So, if your body is cold during these winter months, heat up your life with my newly developed hot sauce pasta recipe below!
Butter Count: 2 Tbsp
INGREDIENTS:
1.25 lbs bread flour
1 whole egg
9 egg yolks
1 cup Tabanero Extra Spicy hot sauce, separated
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
2 zucchini, sliced into 1/2 cm thick rounds
Juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbsp butter
Black pepper to taste
Grated Parmesan to taste
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Add the flour to a large bowl and create a well in the center. Add the egg, egg yolks, and 1/2 cup of hot sauce to the flour well. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dried with a fork until the mixture becomes clumpy. Further combine the ingredients with a clean hand, and kneed the dough about 3 minutes until elastic. If the dough is too wet, add additional flour.
NOTE: Drier is better in this case because the dough will moisten during the next step.
2. Form the dough into a ball and wrap it with tin foil or plastic wrap. Cool the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Note: If the pasta is too moist to roll, just add more flour during the rolling portion of the next step.
3. Cut the dough ball into 8 equal segments. Use a pasta roller attachment to roll out each segment, keeping the other segments under a kitchen towel to avoid them drying out. When the pasta is rolled to the desired thickness (I take it down to a 6 on the Kitchen Aide pasta rolling attachment). Spread a dusting of flour on both sides of each pasta sheet. Roll it lengthwise, and then slice it parallel to the rolling direction so that when you unroll the slices, they are long strips, about 1 cm wide. Hang the Fettuccine strips on a pasta dryer or the back of a chair and allow to dry overnight.
Note: This will take at least a few hours. It's a lot of pasta!
4. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add 1/2 cup of hot sauce to the water. Add a generous amount of salt and a splash of olive oil to the water. Add the desired amount of pasta to the water and cook about 5 minutes until al dente.
Note: Depending on how much flour you use on the pasta, it will absorb more or less hot sauce in the cooking water. If the pasta is not spicy enough, do not continue to cook it. Remove it using a slotted spoon and then toss in additional hot sauce, if desired.
5. While the pasta cooks, Heat the olive oil and garlic in a pan over high heat until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the zucchini to the pan and cook about 2 minutes until they have softened slightly. Add the lemon juice and cover. Lower the heat to medium and continue cooking until the zucchini are almost fully softened, about 2 minutes more. Uncover and add the butter and a splash of hot sauce. Continue cooking until the liquid is almost all the way gone.
6. Toss the pasta and about 1/2 cup of pasta water to the zucchini. Heat on high about 1 minute until the liquid is no longer puddling in the pan.
7. Plate the pasta on plates and top with black pepper and grated Parmesan to taste.