*Rowdy Jojo behavior*
[Clip Source: "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency"]
*silverware clatter and a humph*
*the tiniest slurp imaginable*
*Inquisitive Grunt*
*wet chewing*
*ブワ*
*Gasp of Rapture*
*long slurp*
BABISH: Heywhazzupguys? Welcome back to "Binging with Babish"
where, this week, we're taking a look at the squid ink spaghetti from "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure."
A recipe for which we are gonna need some squid ink.
Cuttlefish ink like this is a little bit hard to find but you can order it on Amazon.
Dried squid ink pasta like this stuff is available at your friendly neighborhood grocer,
but to get the flavor, texture, and appearance we're after, we need to make our own.
And, since my kitchen scale just ran out of batteries, we're gonna eyeball this:
About 2 and 1/2 cups of flour,
placed in the bowl of a 『stand』 mixer,
make a well in the center and crack in 4 large eggs
along with one heaping tablespoon [tbsp] of the jet-black squi-
--EUGH--DON'T smell that, that smells really bad.
But, don't worry, it tastes really good:
very subtle and brine-y and not the way it smells.
(Which is reminiscent of ocean trash.)
Go ahead and gently beat that into the flour with a fork until a thick slurry is formed,
at which point, we're gonna affix dough hooks and mix on medium/medium-low speed for 8-10 minutes.
Now, since we weren't able to weigh out our ingredients, after about 5 minutes,
we're gonna check the consistency of the dough,
adding flour or water as necessary until a smooth, tacky--not sticky--pasta dough is achieved, [Take a shot every time Babish says "as necessary"]
which we're going to wrap in plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes up to 1 hour.
Now, if you've never been on a wedding registry, so you don't have a 『stand』 mixer, we can still do this by hand.
But if you, for example, host a hand-and-table-centric cooking show,
you might want to take some steps to protect them,
because this stuff does stain.
So, I'm starting off the dough the exact same way: in a bowl,
but, once a thick slurry is reached,
I'm going to dump it out onto my work surface and start coaxing it together into a cohesive mass.
If you're unable to weigh your ingredients, this is the better way to make pasta,
because you can just sort of introduce more flour to the party from the tabletop as is necessary.
Anyway! Once our pasta dough is done resting, it's time to start rolling it out.
Give it a little poke. <3
Then we're gonna cut the dough into 4 pieces,
wrapping the remaining 3,
while we work on the first quarter.
First, I'm going to dust it liberally with flour,
roll it out a bit,
and then, pass it through the roller on its widest setting.
And then, I'm going to start laminating the dough
by folding it into thirds and passing it back through the roller 3 to 4 to 5 to... even 6 times,
adding flour as necessary until the right consistency is achieved.
All this working of the dough is gonna help make it more "toothesome" or al dente down the line.
Then, one notch at a time on the roller, we're going to start rolling it out thinner and thinner,
dusting with flour as necessary between rolls.
Then I'm gonna cut this thing in half around setting number 5 so it doesn't get too too long.
Roll out each sheet individually until I get to the second to thinnest setting.
Affix spaghetti cutter, dust liberally with flour, and pass it on through.
Go ahead and submit a GIF of that to Reddit /r/oddlysatisfying,
and lift the pasta away and sort of twist it into a kind of knot,
in order to keep the strands from getting too kinky. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
Place on a liberally floured rim baking sheet,
rinse and repeat with the remaining pasta dough,
until you've got yourself some squid ink spaghetti.
Cover that in plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge until you're ready to go,
because, for now, it's time to focus on the sauce.
The only mise I have to put en place is to open a can of tomato purée,
finely mince half a shallot,
and peel one very large clove of garlic.
Then, in a high-walled sauté pan, I'm going to heat some olive oil until it's shimmering
(Is this shimmeri- yeah it is.)
At which point, we're gonna dump in our finely minced shallot
and sauté that for about 1 minute until it's nice and soft and translucent.
We're then going to crush in our single clove of garlic
and sprinkle in a generous... sprinkle of red pepper flake.
(If you want a little heat)
Let those flavors get to know each other for no longer than 1 minute or until very fragrant
before de-glazing with some dry white wine like Sauvignon Blanc.
And then, we're gonna drop in some of our toma-OH! Jesus...
Maybe more gently, this time, drop in a couple tablespoons [tbsp] of tomato purée.
We're, then, going to simmer that until the 1/4 cup of wine or so that we've added has all but boiled off.
(Which'll take about 3-5 minutes.)
So this is the point where we want to start cooking our pasta,
because that's only gonna take about 1 minute to cook;
fresh pasta cooks very quickly.
So, during the no more than 90 seconds that that spends in the water,
we're going to add some squid ink to our sauce. (About 2 heaping tbsps worth)
JoJo's [Joseph Joestar] mouth is clearly stained black when he eats the pasta,
so there's definitely squid ink in the sauce.
Then, once our pasta is done cooking,
we're dumping it directly into the sauté pan,
along with a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water,
which is gonna make the sauce more cohesive and ~smooth~.
Once all the pasta's in the sauté pan, we want to rigorously agitate it
--toss it if you can--
to really aerate that sauce and get it nice and creamy.
You might need to season to taste with a little bit of kosher salt,
but squid ink is pretty salty, so taste it first.
Then, we're gonna use this LOVELY trick that I saw on the internet,
where we use the help of a ladle to make a perfect twisted mound of our pasta.
I know this isn't exactly how it's plated up in the anime,
but this is the way I like to plate up my pasta. I'm sorry.
Look at this stuff, it's like...
"Alien" meets...
Mindflayer meets...
Venom meets...
...tar.
But! After my first trepidatious bite, I can tell you:
This stuff tastes AWESOME!
The sauce is primarily a lovely tomato, white wine, garlic afair,
but it's lightly scented with the essence of the sea.
and, true to form, it stains my mouth a deep, inky, squid ink ebony.
So, mission accomplished there.
And it ended up in the Clean Plate Club™!
(If you can call THIS the Clean Plate Club™)
[Music: Broke for Free - XXV]