Flavor Explosion, From Scratch

This weekend was super busy, but we managed to fit in a meal from scratch.  Since we had plans for Saturday night, we went with Sunday night as THE night to be in the kitchen.  Since we already did tortellini from scratch, it seemed like a good idea to give non-stuffed pasta a try.

I found this cookbook online and I think it might be out of print because (and I got mine WAY cheaper) it was mostly sold online (I think I was on http://www.half.com/) for over $100 and the book is not that big.  Either way, the mystery of the expensive book got to me and when I found it cheaper, I bought it.

Up for dinner we had a saffron pasta dough recipe

with the vodka sauce from this recipe...

Some of the goods.  I tried to get a smaller bottle of vodka, but this was the smallest the base had to offer.  Oh well, looks like we have vodka in our bar now.  Oh, and the recipe called for tomato paste and canned diced tomatoes, and while this is 'from scratch weekends' there is always wiggle room.  I think many sauce recipes call for the canned tomatoes since I noticed it lists the size from the standard can.  Oh well!

First up we have the saffron.  I am sure many of you know this spice gives a brilliant yellow color to food.  When I think of saffron I think paella.

Here is some more information if you are not familiar with this ridiculously expensive spice:

Each saffron crocus flower has 3 stigmas, it takes about 80,000 flowers (240,000) stigmas to make a pound of saffron. It takes an experienced picker about 12 days to pick this many. By the time saffron gets to retail stores, its cost is $600 to over $2000 per pound.

http://www.foodreference.com/html/artsaffron.html

Saffron actually starts of red.  The stigma of the flower is actually red and this is what is saved and dried.

We used the handy dandy mortar and pestle to grind this up.  You can see it is a reddish orange color.  Certainly not the yellow you think of when you hear saffron.

As it is dissolving in the hot water, you can start to see the yellow come out.

The saffron then had the other liquid ingredients added.  This sat a few minutes to help really bring the color out.  In the meantime we set up the Kitchenaid stand mixer, which is really the best kitchen toy ever.  My mother in law, sister in law and aunt (in law) gave this awesome gift to me (ok, us) at my bridal shower.  This was our first time using this overseas.

So the liquid ingredients, which were know pretty yellow, were added to the flour to make the pasta dough.

It's pretty yellow, that's for sure.

And since the dough had to rest for a few minutes, we decided we might as well do a shot.  Hey, what can I say, when there's vodka in the kitchen, things get wild!

Then (post shot) we set up the pasta attachment.  Yes, we do have a pasta roller/machine from my grandmother, but we also bought this attachment multi pack for the mixer and it had a pasta maker too.

This is where you stick the dough...

Turn it on and out comes some pasta.

My new favorite word is extrude.  Yes, here were are extruding pasta.  Honestly, it was like playing with playdough!  Looks like hair!!!

In case you can't tell, we went with regular old spaghetti since it was our first time trying this and there was no need to get too fancy.

Then we set it here to dry.

While the pasta was drying, it was time to start the vodka sauce.  Tomatoes and cream, along with vodka, and some dried pepper flakes, which I think gave it a major kick.

It was a pretty sticky dough (we are thinking due to the humidity here) so it was sorta sticking together, but it seemed to boil with out any difficulty.

If it looks like pasta, and it tastes like pasta...

then it must be PASTA!

Mix it with the sauce...

Here we go.  A lovely candlelit dinner for two with a homecooked meal from scratch and some Timmerman's Lambic, cherry beer.

The final product...

So, the flavor explosion may have been off the charts with this one.  It was very flavorful, very spicy in my opinion.  We both rated this dish fair.  With practice the pasta making will get better.  The original vodka sauce recipe used a herbed pasta, so that may have been a better pairing.  The saffron pasta really had it's own flavor.  The saffron label said it has a peppery taste and I am certain I was tasting that.  I think this saffron pasta dough would be good for a stuffed pasta, maybe even lasagna. 

So that concludes this issue of FROM SCRATCH weekends!

QUESTION:  What is your favorite "flavored" pasta?  Did you make anything from scratch this weekend?