Tips and Tricks - Chapter 1

Cooking Skill Level: You Decide

I just want to remind you that pasta and pie crust will take you far in cooking books. There are many readymade pasta shapes that can be used for scenery, bodies, animals, and clothing. You can also use cooked lasagna noodles and cookie cutters/knives to create just the shape you need. For example, if you need a sweater, you can make one by cutting a sweater shape out of a cooked noodle. If you need Rapunzel’s hair, you could use cooked and braided angel hair pasta (or spaghetti squash!).

If you find yourself using the cooked lasagna noodle method a lot, do yourself a favor and try the pasta recipe I’ve recommended. It’s so easy and so good that you won’t mind making a meal for yourself out of the odd shapes that are left after you cut out the shapes you need. Just cook those pieces and toss them in butter and you’ll be happy.

Pasta:

2 to 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour or Italian Style (00) flour 3 eggs 1 tsp salt

Blend all ingredients and knead until flour is incorporated and dough is elastic. Put in plastic bag and let rest on countertop for about ½ hour. Dust your countertop liberally with flour and using a rolling pin, roll out the dough. Flip the dough and flour it so it doesn’t stick, and continue rolling (turning/flipping as needed) until the dough is as thin as you can get it (it plumps when cooked, so you want it thin). I try to get it thin enough to see my hand through it. Use cookies cutters, knives, pizza cutter, etc. to achieve desired shapes. In a large pan, bring a couple of quarts of water to a boil. Salt the water. Stir the water and drop in the pasta shapes, continuing stirring for about a minute so the shapes don’t stick together. Cook for 4-6 minutes, testing for doneness. Drain and serve.

Just a note about this recipe … I use a flour blend, Italian Blend from King Arthur Flour Company, but All Purpose flour works as well. I also often add dried herbs to the flour before mixing and kneading. I’ve even been known to add spices like nutmeg or cinnamon to the water when boiling the pasta. It doesn’t add too much flavor, rather just a hint.

Just as you can use cooked lasagna noodles or homemade pasta to cut shapes, you can use a prepared pie crust or your own homemade ones. These make great cookies and are perfect with some fresh fruit to make a story-based dessert. Sometimes, just before the meal, but after the story, I’ll give each of the kids a cookie cutter and let them cut out dessert. I’ll then bake them while the boys eat, and they just love having a dessert they made. If I use a prepared crust, I’ll sprinkle it with cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, colored decorating sugar, or brush it with some liquid flavoring (vanilla, orange, etc.). If I make my own, I might add some flavorings to the liquid I use, or powdered spices to the flour. Even plain, they make great tasting “cookies”.

The best part of all of this is that you can always just tell the kids that’s what it’s supposed to look like, or you can only find this kind of [insert noun here] on windless days in Peru while riding on the back of a large fish and wearing red and blue striped rubber boots on the wrong foot.

I’ll be doing more of these sorts of hints to fill in the weeks without a book, so look for the next one which will be all about body parts (complete with pictures).