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Q.
Can fresh pasta be made without eggs? If so, recipe please.
A. Here's
what Christian Teubner, author of  The
Pasta Bible, has to say on the subject: "Pasta dough consisting
only of flour and water is made much better in factories than it
can ever be at home." He says factories have better access to special
varieties of flour and the machinery to manipulate it adequately.
So technically, he leaves the door open for flour-and-water pastas,
but he sure doesn't provide any recipes for eggless pasta. Neither
does Marcella Hazan or the authors of many of the other cookbooks
sagging on our overburdened Italian shelves.
But Guiliano
Bugialli, author of numerous Italian cookbooks including  The
Fine Art of Italian Cooking says pasta from the area around
Genoa has traditionally been eggless. The pasta he presents is called
trenette, which, he says, is commonly confused with tagliatelle
or fettuccine (flat strips about 1/4-inch wide), but which is significantly
different in two ways: one edge is curly and there are no eggs in
the dough. And while packaged pasta is replacing fresh all too often
in Genoa these days, he says he still knows people "of the older
generation" who make fresh trenette.
The ingredients
for trenette are 2-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour,
1 cup of cold water, 2 teaspoons of olive oil, and a pinch of salt.
The pasta can be made by hand, the same as a pasta with eggs, by
making a well in the flour on a flat surface, putting the water,
oil and salt into the well, and gradually incorporating the flour
into the wet ingredients. Once the mixture has come together, knead
it until you have a smooth ball. You can also make it in a food
processor. Once the dough is formed, roll it by hand or using a
pasta machine. Then, if you want to be authentic — and who
doesn't? — you cut it by hand, using a knife on one side of
each strip and a jagged pastry cutter on the other. A traditional
dressing for this pasta is pesto.
Q. Many
flourless cake recipes call for using a springform pan and putting
that pan into a water bath. After my first disaster, (the water
leaked in and ruined the cake), I decided to do a test and see if
tinfoil would work. Before pouring in the batter, I double-wrapped
the pan with tin foil from top to bottom and put it into a water
bath. I used something to weigh down the pan so that the water would
come halfway up the sides. I checked it a half hour later and the
water had already leaked into the springform pan. Is using a regular,
not-springform pan the only solution to this? And better yet, can
I skip it altogether and just put a pan of water on a rack under
the rack where the cake pan is?
A. We
approached your question from several angles before zeroing in on
some possible solutions.
A flourless
cake (many of which are out-and-out lies and include a few tablespoons
of flour) relies on eggs and other squishy ingredients to give it
structure, and requires gentle cooking to allow the center to set
before the outside becomes dry and inedible. Some recipes recommend
placing the pan in a water bath, in which the cake pan is set in
a larger pan, with water coming about halfway up the sides of the
cake pan. This tempers the cooking significantly, because no matter
how hot the oven is, the temperature of the water cannot rise above
212°F (100°C). Putting the pan of water on a lower rack
under the cake pan would defeat the purpose and leave the cake at
the mercy of the much hotter oven air.
Putting a springform
pan in a water bath does indeed present problems. Someone on the
staff here suggested that it is all a question of the quality of
the springform pan. A good pan wouldn't leak, this person said.
So we asked the folks at Kaiser Bakeware, who make a line of high-quality
springform pans. Their answer? "Our springform pans are not made
to be used in a waterbath," a spokeswoman said. So that's out.
Now, we all
know that if you have a large sheet of aluminum foil that covers
the bottom of the pan completely and comes well up the sides, and
as long as you are gentle enough with it and don't puncture
it, it will keep water out. If you don't put a hole in the foil,
the water won't come in. As a practical matter, though, we've seen
lots of recipes that call for you to wrap a springform pan with
two layers of foil, so apparently they know how rough you are and
that you are likely to cause a leak. It does work, we've used it
ourselves, but it's a nuisance and a mess.
Our solution
is to find another recipe. We came across two in the ucook.com database
that address the problem in different ways. The first, Flourless
Chocolate Cake, uses a regular cake pan, which is well greased
and dusted with flour (or cocoa), and has a layer of parchment paper
at the bottom of the pan, which is also buttered and floured. The
cake is still baked in a water bath, but without the mess. Another
option with an equally catchy name, Flourless
Chocolate Cake keeps the springform pan but omits the water
bath, and cooks the cake for 3 hours in a low-temperature oven (250°F,
120°C). Take your pick, or sign up for that adult ed. class
on the ancient art of aluminum-foil origami.
Q. I
have a baron of beef roast (inside round) that is 910 grams in weight.
My question is how long and at what temp. do I cook it in order
for the meat to be medium-rare to medium? I do not yet own a meat
thermometer.
A. Your
question is a little tricky, because a baron of beef in Britain
is a lovely (usually large) cut of meat associated with the sirloins.
In the US, a baron of beef is an imprecise term used to describe
large, less important cuts that are better-suited to braising. And
inside round is not a common name for a cut in the US. So we'll
assume that your baron is British and that roasting is the ideal
method. If you cook your 2-pound roast at 325°F (160°C
or Gas Mark 3), it should be medium-rare after about 1-1/2 hours.
Add 15 minutes if you want medium. In either case, remember to let
the meat rest for about 15 minutes after you take it out of the
oven before carving.
And our meek
and well-intentioned suggestion to you is to eat ground beef for
a couple of weeks and buy a meat thermometer with the money you
save.
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