Our pals at Rio Vista Olives sent us the incredible oil that we cook with in this post. Like everything that we recommend on our blog, we use and love their products, and hope that you will too!
The Story
This week’s dish is short and sweet, figuratively. Otherwise it’s long and savoury. Every now and then we get asked about cocoa pasta, so this week we’re sharing our go-to recipe for cocoa fettuccine, served with a mascarpone and walnut sauce, and topped with toasted buckwheat. We like to pair the pure, bitter cocoa with other savoury flavours, but you could quite easily serve it with something sweeter if that’s your thing.
And yes, we hope that you’re in the mood for a spot of ugly food. Because for all of its merits, from polyphenols in the cocoa to the short cooking time of the sauce, brown pasta in a creamy sauce is a bit of a visual contrast to last week’s picturesque asparagus and mascarpone cappellacci.
The Pasta
We’ve talked at length before about the gluten properties of flour, and the makeup of pasta doughs, so I won’t get into it again now, but I will say that the amount of cocoa we use in this recipe significantly lowers the integrity of the dough as the pasta’s made. Once cooked, it holds together well, and can even be folded to form filled pasta, but you may notice similarities with our gluten-free dough as you’re rolling it out. Just persevere, give it plenty of kneading and refolding as you pass it through the machine, and don’t worry if those pasta sheet edges are a little ragged.
So mix up your dough ingredients as you would for any other pasta, and make sure that you give it a full ten minutes of kneading before resting it for half an hour. If you’re using a pasta machine, we always recommend rolling the dough through the thickest setting a few times, folding over itself in between passes. This helps strengthen those gluten bonds a little more, like an extension of the kneading time, and is particularly important for doughs like this (where 20% of the dry component contains no gluten). Then incrementally step it through to a medium-thick setting; for us, on a 9-setting machine, this is 5.
Slice it with a fettuccine attachment, or a good old knife. Though there’s an enduring and validly pedantic argument over the differences between fettuccine and tagliatelle, it’s mostly about whether you hand-cut it or not. So if you use a knife, call it tagliatelle.
You can lightly toss your fresh pasta in flour and then transfer to baking paper lined trays, or hang it up on a pasta rack until it begins to stiffen, before carefully laying it out on trays. Just make sure that you don’t leave it dangling for too long, as it is quite brittle before it’s cooked. Store your pasta uncovered in the refrigerator for up to one week and it will dehydrate nicely, gaining a firm bite.
Cocoa pasta is really well suited to earthy flavours like mushrooms or ox-tail, but if you’re after something quicker, you can’t go wrong with cheese. In fact, our sauce takes little more time than you need to melt the mascarpone. Just grind your walnuts to a paste and throw them in a pan with the butter and cheese, and stir until it’s melted. Add your cooked al dente fettuccine into the pan, toss it through (using a little retained pasta water if it’s looking too dry or not emulsifying properly), and serve it up. We also toasted some buckwheat and a few extra walnuts to plate with, and can highly recommend the addition of a little gorgonzola if you’re in the mood.
Note that our plated dish this week uses a second batch of pasta that we made with the darkest cocoa we could find (just in case you were wondering whether it had gotten darker after cooking)! Use whatever cocoa you prefer, as the ratios in the recipe will remain the same.
Until next week, stay happy, and eat pasta!
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Air tight container for resting
- Pasta roller and cutter (if not using a rolling pin and knife)
- Frypan
Ingredients
Pasta
- 100 g 00 flour
- 60 g durum semolina flour
- 40 g cocoa powder
- 2 eggs
- 40 ml water
- 1.5 tsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Chilli Pressed Agrumato), substitute with plain extra virgin olive oil and chilli powder to taste
Sauce
- 10 g raw buckwheat
- 50 g walnuts
- 20 g butter
- 140 g mascarpone
Instructions
Pasta
- Combine all pasta ingredients, and then knead for 10 minutes. Transfer to an airtight container and rest for 30 minutes, away from heat or direct sunlight.
- To form into pasta, separate the dough into four pieces, and then roll each through the thickest setting of the pasta machine a few times, folding over itself in between each pass. Step through to a thickness of 5, and cut into sheets of approximately 30-40cm.
- Roll each sheet through a fettuccine cutter, tossing the finished pasta through a small amount of flour before transferring to baking paper-lined trays, or hanging from a pasta rack until dry. Refrigerate uncovered for up to one week.
Sauce
- To prepare the sauce, set aside a few walnuts to plate up with, and grind the remainder into a paste using a mortar and pestle.
- Lightly toast the buckwheat and 4-5 pieces of walnut in a dry pan on low heat, for 4-5 minutes.
- Remove the buckwheat and walnuts from the pan, and add the butter, mascarpone (retaining a couple of tablespoons for plating), and walnut paste. Stir constantly for 30-60 seconds, until the mascarpone has melted and all ingredients have combined.
- Drop the pasta into a lightly salted pot of boiling water, and cook until al dente. Drain, retaining a little of the pasta water, and then stir into the sauce. Add a small amount of water back in if sauce is too dry. Serve with toasted buckwheat and walnuts, and a couple of dollops of fresh mascarpone.
