Fresh Tagliatelle with Sprouting Broccoli and Oozy Cheese Sauce (Jamie Oliver)

Pasta is quick and easy to cook. All I need to do is to open a packet of dried pasta and pour them into a pot of boiling water. It seems so convenient to cook a decent pasta dish but why am I making my own fresh pasta from scratch today?

"Hey, I can do that too!"... I can stop telling myself this after I saw a particular Australian Masterchef episode, Make that pasta (episode 11 from Season 4). In this episode, the contestants were racing to make at least 250g of fresh pasta to avoid elimination and all of them can make their pasta easily in a glimpse. So, here I am embracing myself to learn making these Tagliatelle all the way scratch...

Tagliatelle are long and flat ribbons pasta that are similar in shape to fettuccine and are typically about 0.65 cm to 1 cm wide and it is great to eat with thick sauces just like the cheesy sauce that I'm cooking with this recipe.

As mentioned in this recipe, any nice melting cheese can be used to make this oozy cheesy sauce and I have chosen to use Dutch Fontina because it is quite mild in taste, thick and creamy in texture. I would like to try cooking this dish with other cheeses one day. I reckon the sauce made from Italian Fontina or Gruyere cheeses will create a different taste and texture.

"Hey, I can do that too!"... but can I? Although everything seems so easy and quick on TV, in actual fact, my first-time pasta wasn't made as quickly as I thought I would. My husband reckon I will be eliminated immediately if I'm making fresh pasta in this Masterchef challenge. On the consolation side, maybe a little more practice makes perfect... In regardless, we all unanimously agree that it is definitely worth the wait to eat this freshly made pasta. The texture is so much nicer than the dried ones and a little QQ* tension with every single bite. Yum!

* The meaning of "QQ" in Chinese term means chewy food with bouncy texture.

My Fresh Tagliatelle with Baby Broccoli and Oozy Cheese Sauce

All the beautiful ingredients that I used to make this dish.

Making Tagliatelle from scratch

Making the OOZY sauce

See the OOZY effect...

Here's the recipe from Food Network

(with my modification in blue)

Ingredients

For the pasta:

4 large free-range or organic eggs

2 cups pasta flour, plus (a lot more) extra for dusting

Sea salt

For the cheese sauce:

1 cup crème fraiche

5 ounces sliced fontina or other nice melting cheese (I used Dutch Fontina)

5 ounces freshly grated Parmesan

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 pound purple sprouting broccoli  

(I used baby broccoli which has a larger number of heads with many thin stalks.)

2 large free-range or organic egg yolks

1 small bunch fresh marjoram, oregano or thyme tips, leaves picked (I used oregano)

Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

You can buy ready-made dried or fresh tagliatelle, but this is a really quick way to make your own.

Crack the eggs into a food processor and add the flour. Whiz it up and listen for the sound changing to a rumble - this means the dough is coming together nicely. Turn the power off and test the consistency by pinching the dough. If it's a bit sticky add a little more flour and pulse again (Instead of using a food processor, I did the initial mixing by hand).

Tip the dough mixture onto a floured surface and shape it into a ball using your hands. Give it a little knead until smooth, then divide your dough into 4 equal parts. Start on the thickest setting of your pasta machine and run the first bit of dough through 4 or 5 times, moving the rollers closer together each time until the pasta is silky, smooth and about as thick as a CD. Flour your finished sheet generously, then fold it up and cut across into 1/2-inch strips. Gather all the slices together and toss them through your fingers, with a little flour, to open them up and make your pile of tagliatelle. Place to 1 side and repeat with the rest of the dough.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. In a bowl large enough to rest on top of the pan, put your crème fraiche, fontina or other melting cheese and your Parmesan with a pinch of salt and pepper. Place the bowl over the pan for the cheeses to slowly melt. It won't take long. Meanwhile, trim any dry ends off the broccoli, then finely slice the stalks diagonally and leave the florets whole (cutting any larger ones in half).

At this point the cheese sauce should be lovely and oozy, so remove the bowl from above the pan and drop the pasta and broccoli into the boiling water. Boil hard for 2 to 3 min, until the pasta is just cooked through. Whip up the 2 egg yolks and the marjoram, or other chosen herb leaves, into the sauce. Drain the pasta and broccoli, reserving a little of the cooking water, and quickly toss them with the sauce - the heat from the pasta will be enough to cook the eggs through. If the sauce is a little thick, add a few splashes of cooking water to make it silky and loose. Taste and season, if necessary. Serve as quickly as you can, with some extra Parmesan sprinkled over the top and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Grand

Note: I made this dish using 3/4 amount of the pasta recipe and half amount of the cheese sauce and the amount that I made can filled up 2 and 1/2 very hungry tummies.

Happy Cooking
Please support me and like me at Facebook.