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Friday Night Dinner

I've spent most of the day in the kitchen.  After taking the Dog on an epic 4 mile walk, I rested my feet for a minute and thought about what I wanted to do today.

Decided I wanted to make some pasta.  I used to do it on New Year's Day for a couple of years in a row, but it's been probably three or more years since I last did it.  I've got the equipment and had bought some semolina back in January, so decided to just go for it.

Started by making the dough in the Kitchen Aid.

1 cup Semonlina flour
3/4 all-purpose flour
olive oil
salt
water
2 eggs

Mixed that up till it was coming together and took it out and pressed it in shape.  In retrospect I probably should have used a little more water.

Then got out the attachment that rolls it out.  Started running chunks through that on the fattest setting.  Fold it, next setting, fold it, next setting ad nauseum.  I really like playing with my food.

I got it to the 5th setting today.  The dough was drying out too fast.  It's warm here today.

Then I tried to cut it, but it was either took thick to run through or was getting too dry so I laid the pieces out on a cutting board and sliced them up by hand.  Hand-cut pasta.  Could there be a market for this??

Then I laid it out some commercial sized baking sheets I picked up at Williams-Sonoma once for a steal.  I covered the sheets with some less than perfect table napkins we hadn't wanted to quite throw away.

For a snack, I'd bought some kale that I simply removed the stalks from, shredded into bite-sized pieces, sprayed with a little cooking spay, because I'd read you didn't want to use too much oil or it wouldn't crisp up, covered it with some lemon-herb seasoning with sesame seeds and baked it in the convection oven at 200 for about 20 minutes. 

Next up I wanted to make a soup.  Took a veggie bullion cube and added a can of coconut milk to it.  I have to interject here.  I was kind of pissed off.  I wanted coconut milk and the stuff had sugar in it.  It doesn't need to have sugar in it!  Not going back out.  Added a stalk of lemongrass.  Bring that to a boil.  Cut up two carrots an a box of oyster mushrooms and added that with some garlic and ginger.  Let that simmer and added some lime juice and some scallions.  Pretty tasty.  Dry-ass lime, added some lemon.

Like I said, I wasn't going back out.

Time to start another veggie stock.  I've been adding to that as I go.  Anything that can possibly go in it is.

Asparagus sauce for the pasta.  Boiled some water with lemon juice and lemon zest with a some salt.  Boiled the asparagus for about three minutes and put it in an ice bath to keep it pretty-green.  Cut it up, separating the tips from the stalks and pureed the tips in some of the cooking liquid, more ginger and garlic and a pinch of salt.  Tasty!

Sort of waiting now to throw it all together.  Planning to cook the pasta in the asparagus-lemon water and will drain most of the water off once the pasta is done and toss it in the sauce with more lemon.  Should be pretty decent. 

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