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- Alright so Pasta Al Lemone,
a very simple dish with a few simple ingredients
which we must prepare simply.
First we gotta peel and then slice
one large fresh clove of garlic,
roughly or finely chop some fresh parsley
I'm not gonna tell you how to do it, who am I
the parsley police?
And of course the star of the show, a lemon
which we gonna roll on our countertop with firmness
so that it's easier to juice.
And again since this is such a minimalist dish,
it does benefit from home-made pasta,
which I'm going to make entirely by hand
so you don't have to.
I'm bitting three eggs and a little pinch of kosher salt
into a mountain of flour, mixing it until it slowly forms
then tossing it together until a ball dough forms
and kneading it continuously for seven to 10 minutes
until it springs back when poked
indicating that it has a sufficient gluten development
to give us a chewy al dente end product.
Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature
for 30 minutes before retrieving and rolling out.
To do this we are generously flouring both the pasta
and our work surface and using nothing
but a rounded piece of wood and elbow grease.
We are rolling it out to a thickness of about one millimeter
which we are then going to generously flour
and fold like an accordion whose folds do not overlap
does that make any sense?
Basically you don't want your folds overlapping
because it will make your pasta kinky
and not in a fun way.
Then with our very sharpest knife
we are cutting it into nice wide (speaking foreign language)
or however you want, and who am I, the pasta police?
Then one at a time we gonna unfold them,
dust them with flour and twist them into nests.
Again in an effort to prevent pasta kinks
rinse and repeat with the remaining strands
and there you have it homemade pasta.
You could make this by hand
or you could just buy some box pasta.
If you do just remember you get what you pay for
you want a rough textured pasta
that's been cut with bronze dies.
This is gonna release more starch into the cooking water
which is essential for getting an emulsified sauce.
And again to increase starch content
we wanna cook the pasta
in just about as little water as we possibly can
just enough to cover it.
The water will get starchier
and our resultant sauce will get silkier.
Also make sure that you stir it around
when initially dropping into the pot
so that it does not stick together.
Once you got your pasta cooking
it's time to get started on the al lemone part.
Into a high walled saute pan
goes a few glugs of high quality olive oil
maybe two or three tablespoons.
And we're adding our garlic about a teaspoon of chili flakes
and the zest of one lemon while the oil is still cold,
which is gonna help them cook more slowly
and prevent them from burning.
We're also gonna add a couple of twists
of freshly ground black pepper
so that it lightly toasts in the oil
and has enhanced pepperiness.
These are gonna cook for about three to five minutes.
So you wanna start doing this about three to five minutes
before your pasta done
because once the garlic is just lightly blonde not browned
we gonna start dumping in our very al dente pasta.
This pasta is about a minute two minutes
shy of its recommended cooking time.
If you are using fresh pasta
we're boiling that for no more than 30 seconds
just enough to get it partially cooked
and then we will finished cooking it in the sauce.
All these recipes
are gonna be for about a half a pound of pasta.
First step the Oji Italian method.
If you're able this is a good time to give things a toss,
is both gonna evenly cook the pasta
and aerate the sauce in there.
If pan tossing is not yet in your skillset
just agitate a bunch by shaking the pan around
and moving the pasta around with a pair of tongs.
Now at this point of medium low heat
we're gonna add either the juice of one half
or one whole lemon depending on how lemony
you want things to get.
A nice extra glove of extra virgin olive oil,
about a quarter cup of our chopped parsley
maybe two to three ounces of finely grated Parmesan cheese,
give everybody a stir
and then we're gonna add
the single most important ingredient
our still boiling pasta cooking water
starting with about a quarter cups worth
and adding as necessary.
This is what's gonna emulsify our sauce
from a thick and oily broken mess
into a smooth creamy luscious sauce.
Just add a little splash at a time
give it a vigorous stir and see how it looks.
Is it too thick?
Add more pasta water.
Is it too thin?
Add some more cheese.
Ultimately you want the sauce to be a little thinner
than the way you think it should be
because it's going to thicken as it cools.
So once you've hit the sweet spot
this should take no more than one to two minutes.
It's time to twist up and serve.
This guy's gonna be garnished simply
with a little bit of extra freshly grated
Parmigiano-Reggiano,
a sprinkle of parsley and some bonus grated lemon zest.
And there you have it
one of life's very few remaining pleasures
a fast and easy to make Italian classic
an upgrade if you will of pasta aglio e olio.
But there are obviously different versions of this pasta,
let's start with the Americanized one.
This adds both a generous pats of butter
to our slow cooking garlic
along with about a half a cup of heavy cream.
This is obviously not only
going to add a whole lot of richness to our finished dish,
it is basically a cheat code
to make a perfectly emulsified sauce.
From there the procedure is very much the same.
Heat of a medium low heat add our parsley, our cheese
give it a little stir add the juice of one lemon
and cook over medium to medium low heat
for one to three minutes or until the pasta is done cooking
and the sauce has become thick and glossy.
But even this sauce
definitely benefits from some hot pasta water
both to help emulsify
and if you need to thin the sauce.
Oh yeah, did I mention season generously with kosher salt?
Be sure you do that.
Twist up garnish and serve.
And obviously this tastes really good
but I gotta be honest it's a little too rich for me.
The heavy cream makes for a very luscious sauce
but I think it cuts into the sharpness
of the lemon too much.
So I want to find a way
to achieve the same creaminess without losing the flavor
and the answer laid in the eggs, pan absolutely intended.
We're gonna borrow some concepts from carbonara
and make a slurry out of one egg,
one egg yolk, a tablespoon of cream
and about three ounces of grated Parmesan cheese.
Set that aside do all the same things that we did before
then after adding the lemon, the pasta cooking water,
we're gonna add our slurry off the heat
otherwise you're gonna end up with scrambled egg pasta
maybe even take it off the burner just to be safe.
Keep it moving and add a little bit more pasta cooking water
if you need to thin it out and all that residual heat
is going to gently cook the egg
into a positively decadent lemony sauce.
Of course you wanna season generously to taste
with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper,
otherwise I will call the pepper police
and we're off to the races
with this meatless lemony carbonara hybrid thing
that tastes a whole lot better than I just made it sound.
It's definitely far from traditional
a little fussier to make
but it's an effective way
to get the creaminess without the cream.
Now that we're necessarily watching our carbs here I mean,
this is after all my third bowl of pasta today
but it is totally worth the calories.
It is an absolute celebration of lemon and pasta together.
Hope you guys give it a try for yourselves.
Let me know what you think.
It has been a really, really tough week
and I think we could all use a little pasta
or even better, a lot of pasta.
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