Cinnamon Almond Twists

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Cooking with Grace

I recently posted about my overnight bread dough, which is a really simple recipe that rises in the fridge while you sleep and can be made into an artisan loaf in the morning. I mentioned in my post that you can leave the container in the refrigerator for weeks if you want to, and just keep taking little pieces of dough every few days to make small rolls as needed. The last time I made bread, that’s what I did, and I used some of the dough one day to make these beautiful cinnamon-almond twists.

The texture of the bread part is closer to a pretzel, but the flavor is somewhat like a cinnamon roll. I added chopped almonds, which gave these sweet treats a nice crunch.

To make them, I just rolled out a little ball of dough into a rope and flattened it, and then brushed it with melted butter.

I sprinkled sugar over the top

And then some cinnamon and chopped almonds

And rolled it up tightly (starting from the widest side). Then I cut it in half down the middle with a knife I had dipped in water to make sure the dough wouldn’t stick to it.

I separated the two halves, pinched them together at the top, and twisted them to make a braid kind of thing.

Then I put the two ends together to make a ring

And baked it in the oven until it was golden. I was inspired by this recipe because I thought the shape was really cool. My version is a smaller, individual snack that can be made easily for a snack to go with tea or coffee.

After I made these, I started thinking about variations that would be fun to do with this basic idea. The next time I make this, I definitely want to try a savory version with olive oil, grated parmesan cheese, dried oregano, and diced sun-dried tomatoes in place of butter, sugar, cinnamon, and almonds!

If you haven’t made the bread dough and you want to make a flakier version of this recipe, you can use frozen puff-pastry dough. Just make sure to thaw it beforehand.

Cinnamon Almond Twists

Ingredients:

bread dough

2 Tablespoons butter

5 Tablespoons sugar

cinnamon

about 15 almonds, chopped finely

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the butter in a small bowl in the microwave.

Divide the bread dough into five small balls. Roll each into a rope about the thickness of your finger.

Use a rolling pin, cup, or tin can to roll one of the ropes out lengthwise, making it flat and about 12 inches long.

Brush it with butter (if you don’t have a pastry brush, just spread a little butter onto the dough with a spoon) and sprinkle a Tablespoon of the sugar over the top. Shake a little cinnamon on top of the sugar, and sprinkle on chopped almonds.

Roll up the dough tightly (starting from the widest side, to make a long roll) and use a sharp knife to cut all the way down the roll, dividing it into two even pieces.

Pinch the two pieces together at the top, and braid them together, crossing them over each other repeatedly. Then connect the ends to make a ring.

Repeat with the other four balls of dough, and place all the rings on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet. You can sprinkle a little extra sugar over the tops if you like.

Bake for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the rings are golden. Let them cool and then serve with tea or coffee.

Stir-Fried Starch Noodles

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Cooking with Grace

Starch noodles, or dangmyeon (당면) are a type of Korean noodle made from sweet potato starch. Like rice noodles, they are kind of chewy and they don’t contain wheat either, so they’re perfect for people who have to eat gluten-free.

Before they’re cooked, they are very hard and have a sort of silver color.

Once they have been boiled though, they’re soft and chewy and delicious (although they are made with the starch from a sweet potato, there is no noticeable flavor).

Starch noodles are part of a popular Korean dish called japchae (잡채), which is made by stir-frying the cooked noodles with beef, vegetables, and a sugar-soy marinade. But I also think they go very well with honey and red pepper flakes.

I boiled the noodles until they were no longer “al dente” (the Italian phrase “to the tooth” means that the inside of a piece of pasta is still a little hard, and some people like to serve it this way) and added a little sesame oil and stirred it around to prevent them from sticking to each other.

Then I stir-fried some vegetables with chopped garlic (I used onion, carrot and broccoli for this dish, but carrot and red pepper and spinach are most commonly used in japchae).

And then added the cooked noodles, soy sauce, and honey.

I stir-fried the noodles together with the vegetables and sauce for a minute, and then served it with crushed red pepper flakes and toasted sesame seeds.

Stir-fried starch noodles are so yummy and easy to prepare. You can use any vegetables you have in your refrigerator, or even add sliced beef and make traditional japchae! Enjoy :)

Starch Noodle Stir-Fry

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 small carrot

a handful of broccoli pieces

1 clove garlic

¼ cup slivered onion

2 Tablespoons soy sauce

2 Tablespoons honey

toasted sesame seeds and crushed red pepper flakes

Directions:

Drain the water out and stir in a teaspoon of the sesame oil to stop them from sticking together.

Peel the carrot and cut it into slices. Peel and chop the garlic. If you are using frozen broccoli, microwave it for a few minutes to defrost it.

In a wok or stir-fry pan, heat the other teaspoon of sesame oil and stir-fry the garlic, onion, carrot, and broccoli.

When the garlic starts to get crispy, add the noodles, soy sauce, and honey. Turn the heat off and continue stirring the noodles and vegetables together in the hot pan for about a minute.

Serve with sesame seeds and red pepper flakes to taste.

Pasteria (Italian Easter Wheat Pie)

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Cooking with Grace

If you celebrate holidays with Italian family members, you probably associate Easter time with a lot of delicious foods, including a golden, creamy, almost-cheesecake-like pie called pasteria or pasteria napolitana or “wheat pie” (which is what my family always referred to it as). It’s made with a sweet pastry dough, and the filling includes the yummy flavors of ricotta and orange along with the texture of cooked wheat.

The legend that explains the pasteria’s origin says peasants in Naples were so hungry that when the grain ship arrived, they couldn’t wait to grind the grain and make bread. Instead, they boiled it and ate it. Every year, we similarly remember how desperately the world needed Christ as we celebrate Easter. Other traditional ingredients of the wheat pie represent the season in different ways—ricotta is a gift from the shepherds that welcomed Jesus at his birth, and orange flower water is the sweet scent of springtime and new life.

Orange flower water can be found in Indian grocery stores or sold in little bottles at an Italian specialty shop. It’s perfume-y like rosewater but tastes of orange. This ingredient can be hard to get if you don’t live close by these types of foreign grocery shops, so what I did was soak orange zest in Madiera wine and use the infusion to flavor the pie. If you just used orange zest in place of the liquid, the flavor would be in little pieces throughout the pie rather than evenly throughout the filling.

You can actually use any sweet white wine, light rum, or even Grand Marnier for a really orange-y tasting pie. I let my orange zest infusion soak for an hour.

To make Italian sweet pastry crust, called pasta frollo, I whisked together flour, powdered sugar, and a little salt. Whisking is the cheating version of “sifting” flour with other dry ingredients—it incorporates air for lighter, fluffier baked goods.

I added cold butter

And mixed them in by pinching them into pieces with my fingertips until the flour-butter mixture looked like crumbly sand:

The more thoroughly you crumble the butter in, the less flaky the pie crust will be, because the little pieces of butter are what create the “flakes” in pie crust. This is why it’s important not to over-mix or over-knead at any time when making pie crust.

I beat an egg with a little of the liquid from the orange zest liqueur, and poured it into the mixing bowl.

Then I used a sharp knife to mix it in and form a dough (using a knife is better than using something flat like a spoon, which might crush all those little pieces of butter and then the pie crust would be gooey instead of flaky).

I pushed all the crumbly dough pieces together just enough to make them into a ball, and wrapped it in plastic wrap. While it was chilling in the fridge, I made the filling.

I mixed cinnamon into sugar

And then mixed in eggs, vanilla, and the rest of the orange liqueur mixture (including the zest pieces) until it was kind of foamy on the top.

I stirred in the ricotta and cooked grain

Before grano cotto was sold in cans or jars, like it is today in Italian specialty stores, cooks who wanted to make this pie would have to start soaking wheat kernels days ahead of time (some recipes even say that the wheat should be soaked for TWO WEEKS). Yay for pre-cooked wheat! And yay for the internet too, because people like me who live far away from Italian grocery stores can buy grano cotto online and have it arrive on our doorsteps before our wheat kernels would have even been done soaking.

As soon as the mixture is smooth, stop stirring it because ricotta is sort of delicate and it can get watery if you break down its texture too much.

After the pasta frollo has been in the refrigerator for an hour, you can roll it out

Then put it into a buttered pie dish

Pour the filling in and make the criss-cross thing on top by rolling the scraps of leftover dough into flat strips and placing them over the filling.

I even made a cute little decorative border, although it didn’t hold up very well in the oven :(

I cooked this pie until it was just a golden color, although a lot of wheat pies are cooked until they are brown on top. You can take it out of the oven when it is as light as this one, or wait longer if you want a more solid pie that’s easier to cut and serve.

I love to sprinkle some powdered sugar on top, too. The pie goes perfectly with a cup of coffee, and is best enjoyed at Easter time shared with family and friends!

Pasteria (Italian Easter Wheat Pie)

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons Madiera wine

1 ¼ cups flour

¼ cup powdered sugar

salt

1 stick cold butter

1 egg

¾ cup sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

4 eggs (at room temperature)

1 Tablespoon vanilla

1 ½ cups whole-milk ricotta cheese

1 ½ cups cooked wheat

Directions:

Start making the pasta frollo by whisking together the flour, powdered sugar, and a pinch of salt.

Cut the stick of butter into little pieces and crumble it into the flour mixture with your fingers. You can also use a food processor for this step, but be careful not to over-blend the dough.

Beat together an egg and a Tablespoon of the liquid from the orange-liqueur mixture, and stir into the flour mixture using a knife.

Knead until the dough comes together, then wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350.

To make the pie filling, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt in a mixing bowl.

Whisk in the eggs, vanilla, and the rest of the orange liqueur and zest. Use a spoon to gently stir in the ricotta and cooked wheat, getting all the lumps out but not overmixing it.

Roll out 2/3 of the refrigerated dough on a floured surface, and put it in a pie pan that has been greased with butter or oil.

Pour the pie filling mixture in, and then top with lattice strips made from the leftover pasta frollo.

Put the pie in the oven and let it cook for 30 to 40 minutes. Serve with powdered sugar over the top.

Congee (Rice Porridge)

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Cooking with Grace

I’m sick today :( Actually I’ve had a cold for the past three or four days, so I’ve been drinking a lot of ginger tea and sitting in bed watching dramas and reading books, which isn’t so bad :) But I thought this would be a good time to share a recipe for one of my favorite “sick-people foods” that I’ve been eating a lot of lately, called congee. Maybe you know it as porridge or juk. It’s just rice that has been cooked with a lot of water to make a creamy sort of thick rice stew.

I like to season mine with salt and top it with green onions, shiitake mushrooms, peas, roasted seaweed, and black and white sesame seeds

In China, congee (粥) is known as as the ideal nourishing food for really little children and older people, because it’s easy to digest. So if you are sick and having stomach problems, or if you’re one of those people who finds it hard to eat something right when you wake up, this might be a good recipe to try. Congee is also great for people who are trying to lose weight, because it’s made of a small amount of rice and a large amount of water, so it fills you up and kind of tricks your body into thinking you ate a big bowl of rice when really you just ate about two spoonfuls.

Although you can eat it plain with just a little salt, it’s really fun to add your own combinations of vegetables and seasonings to the porridge.

I’ve eaten seafood congee at dim sum (it had abalone, shrimp, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and fresh herbs in it and we seasoned our bowls of it with salt and soy sauce) and there are so many other flavorful toppings you can add to customize your congee, like:

sliced mushrooms
green peas
diced carrot
garlic chips
roasted seaweed strips
chopped green onions
chopped fresh cilantro
a hard-boiled egg
chopped chicken
seafood
minced dried pork
Si Chuan peppercorns
sriracha sauce
black sesame seeds
white sesame seeds
black pepper
soy sauce

You can also use chicken stock instead of water to cook the porridge for extra flavor. I sprinkled some powdered beef bullion and crushed Si Chuan peppercorns on top of my congee as a seasoning, added slivers of cabbage and carrot, then a few shakes of red pepper flakes and sesame seeds on top.

And although congee is traditionally savory, you can experiment with sweet toppings and fruits like:

fresh peach
fresh strawberry
apples
cinnamon
star anise
candied ginger
honey
walnuts
almonds
dates
raisins
white sesame seeds
coconut
adzuki beans (sweet red beans)

I even tried a new idea today: maple syrup and walnuts (a really “western” kind of interpretation of congee)!

It was actually very good. I always used to pour in a little maple syrup when I ate cream of rice, and congee is a sort of similar idea to cream of rice (or cream of wheat, grits, etc.)

Making congee is really simple. All I do is boil the rice and water together, then turn the heat to low and let it simmer while I go do something else. You can stir it every once in a while, and usually it will be done in about two hours. This recipe makes four rice-bowl-sized portions.

Congee (Rice Porridge)

Ingredients:

salt to taste

whatever toppings you want

Directions:

Heat over high heat until it is boiling, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for two hours or until the congee has a thick, porridge-like consistency.

Season with salt, serve in rice bowls and add the toppings you choose.

Chana Masala (Chickpea Curry)

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Cooking with Grace

I don’t usually cook Indian food much because I don’t keep a lot of the necessary ingredients around my kitchen (I never seem to have all 20 of the spices listed in a typical Indian recipe, haha) and honestly I have never really put the effort into getting the ingredients from an Indian grocery store and learning the basic recipes. I have been to the local specialty store that sells Indian and Pakistani groceries, but I ended up buying a lot of snack mixes (those bags of spicy, crunchy, deliciousness) and nothing else. That stuff is so yummy.

Someday I would like to take the time to really learn Indian cooking, but for now there is just one dish that I do love to make. It’s my favorite Indian food of all time (a very popular one), chana masala!

Chana masala is a curry of chickpeas (chana means chickpea in both Hindi and Urdu) from the region of Punjab. Punjab is half in India and half in Pakistan, so actually this is a northern Indian dish and a Pakistani dish too.

If you’ve eaten at an Indian restaurant before, you’ve probably seen chana masala. It’s usually kind of orange colored, with the red color coming from fresh tomato and the yellow from curry powder. In my recipe, the sauce is a darker red. When I have used fresh tomatoes, it has always been too watery for my tastes, so I like to use tomato puree instead. My recipe is not really authentic, but has a very spicy, deep flavor that I love (from cinnamon, another nontraditional ingredient).

One part of the authentic chana masala preparation that I do include in my recipe is the tangy flavor. Every time I enjoy this dish at an Indian restaurant, there is a bright, almost-lemony-but-not-really kind of taste that absolutely characterizes chana masala for me. The ingredient that produces this flavor is amchoor powder, made by grinding up dried, unripe mango slices.

You can get this mango powder at an Indian grocery store. If you do go to a specialty store for one ingredient, it should be this one, because although you can substitute it with lemon juice, it’s really this flavor that makes the chana masala go from good to super awesomely delicious and great.

I started the curry by cooking the spices (including the amchoor powder) in butter along with onion, garlic, and ginger.

The other spices I used were pretty common ones in non-Indian kitchens (curry powder, ground cinnamon and ginger, and black pepper).

I added a can of drained and rinsed chickpeas and a can of tomato puree, which may also be labeled “tomato sauce,” although it should just contain tomatoes and maybe salt or something.

Also I added two dried chili peppers for extra spiciness. If you don’t want your curry as spicy, leave this out or just add one.

After it cooked for a while and the sauce reduced down, I served it over rice.

You can serve it over plain basmati or jasmine rice, or over coconut rice. I love coconut rice. It’s not sweet, it’s just mildly coconut-flavored either from coconut milk replacing some of the water or coconut flakes added to the raw rice before cooking. I added a Tablespoon of finely shredded unsweetened coconut per serving of basmati rice before I cooked it.

Coconut rice is popular in Southeast Asia and India, and it goes so nicely with spicier curries because of the refreshing flavor that the coconut provides.

The pictures in this post only show about a third of the amount that the entire recipe makes. So this might serve three or four people as a side dish (Indian meals, like Korean and Chinese meals, are usually made up of rice, one or two meat dishes, and a number of vegetable-based side dishes).

Chana Masala (Chickpea Curry)

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons butter

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

½ teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger

¼ cup chopped onion

¼ teaspoon amchoor (dried mango powder)

1 Tablespoon curry powder

½ teaspoon each ground ginger and cinnamon

¼ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

1 can tomato puree

2 dried chili peppers (optional if you like it spicier)

Directions:

In a saucepan, melt the butter and then add the garlic, fresh ginger, onion pieces, and the spices. Stir and cook over medium heat for about a minute.

Add the can of tomato and the chickpeas, add the dried pepper if you are using it. Stir together, turn the heat to low and put the top on.

Let it cook for about thirty minutes. Make rice while the curry simmers, and serve together. You can also garnish with fresh cilantro (coriander) if you want.

How to Make Bread (The Easy Way)

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Cooking with Grace

There is really no comfort food like fresh baked bread warm out of the oven.

Something about tearing off a piece of steaming hot ciabatta or sourdough, with its spongy texture from all the holes and bubbles on the inside, makes for an experience that can’t even be compared with eating store-bought sliced bread.

For me, the best way to enjoy homemade bread is simply dipped in a good olive oil (and maybe a few seasonings like crushed red pepper flakes, dried oregano, and black pepper).

And sometimes I add some grated parmesan cheese too :) I really could eat this all day!

As much as I have always loved cooking and baking, for quite a while bread-making seemed to me like a special secret complicated process that required starters and “bread flour” and various stages of rising and proofing and measuring temperatures or even using a bread machine. Although those fancy things can be fun once you get the hang of baking bread, they aren’t necessary to make a good “artisan” loaf!

For the average person who doesn’t have the free time to tend to a ball of dough every three hours for the entire day, or just wants a simpler approach to homemade bread, I created this recipe that literally takes minutes.

Before you go to bed, simply mix together yeast, warm water, some flour, and a tiny bit of brown sugar and salt (just to make the flavor a little deeper).

At this point, the dough will be kind of wet and not knead-able at all. Just seal a top on the container (I used a glass tupperware kind of thing) and put it in the fridge overnight.

The yeast in bread dough is activated by warmer temperatures, so a lot of bread recipes require two-hour or three-hour long periods of rising time “in a warm place” or “covered with kitchen towels or blankets.” Although the refrigerator is not a warm place, the rising time in my recipe is extended (twelve hours rather than three) so the same process happens, just at a slower rate, while you are sleeping.

In the morning, you can poke your finger in the dough and see that it has risen up and become more like bread dough

I sprinkle flour over the top so that when I pull out a handful of dough, it doesn’t stick to my hands

Then I knead it just a few times with a small sprinkling of extra flour on the counter, and form it into a ball.

I like the look and texture of cornmeal on the bottom of the loaf, because it makes it seem really professional and it gives a nice bit of extra crunch to the bottom crust. So I put a piece of parchment paper down on a baking sheet to prevent sticking, sprinkle cornmeal and put the ball of dough on top, then dust the top with flour and “slash” some lines or an X on top of the dough ball.

This can be the hardest part, because often the knife will stick to the dough when you try to cut it and it can ruin the look of the loaf of bread. I have tried dipping the knife in flour before I cut the bread, and that works okay, but the best method is to get the knife a little wet with cold water and then make the cuts.

While the oven is preheating (for about thirty minutes) let the bread rise with a kitchen towel over it. Then bake it until the crust is golden and hard when you tap it.

It really is possible to make gorgeous-looking bread with so little effort! You can literally wake up, roll the dough into a ball and put it on a baking sheet, go take a shower while the oven preheats, come back half an hour later and put the bread in the hot oven, and by the time you get your coffee brewing, your fresh-baked artisanal bread will be ready to enjoy at breakfast time!

Butter and raspberry jam are nice together on a slice of homemade bread

And pain au chocolate (bread with chocolate) is a popular French breakfast

I also like to add fresh fruit to combinations like these for a tea-time snack.

I topped bread pieces with melted semisweet chocolate and strawberry slices, and others with orange marmalade and peach slices.

My recipe makes three smaller loaves or two larger loaves, and you don’t have to make them all at once. You can make a tiny bread roll one day as a snack, leave the container in the fridge, and then come back three days later and make a loaf of bread. Actually, the longer it sits, the better the bread will be!

Simple Homemade Bread

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon brown sugar

½ teaspoon salt

270 g flour (a little over 2 cups, see note at the bottom)

a little bit of fine ground cornmeal (optional)

Directions:

Stir in the sugar, salt, and then the flour.

Mix well to form a sticky dough and put the lid on the container. Put the container in the refrigerator overnight (or for about 12 hours, the longer it rests in the refrigerator, the better).

Open the container and sprinkle a little flour on top of the bread dough so it doesn’t stick to your hands when you pull a piece out.

For a larger loaf, take half of the dough out and knead it with just enough flour to prevent it from sticking to the counter. Then roll it into a ball and place it on a baking sheet or glass baking dish that has been lined with parchment paper and then sprinkled with a little cornmeal for texture on the bottom of the bread (you don’t have to do this step if you don’t have cornmeal or don’t want to use it).

To make smaller rolls, do the same thing but use small handfuls of the dough rolled into golf-ball-sized pieces and placed a couple of inches apart on the baking sheet or dish.

Dust the tops of the loaves (or rolls) with a little flour and make slashes or X’s across the top with a sharp knife that has been wet with some water to prevent the dough from sticking to the knife.

Cover with one or two kitchen towels and let it sit for 30 minutes to an hour. While you are waiting, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Bake the bread until it is golden and hard on the outside. Depending on your oven and on the size of the loaves of bread or rolls, it might take anywhere from 30 minutes to about an hour. Check it every once in a while, but don’t be afraid to let the crust get nice and crispy :)

*NOTE: I measured the flour by weight (because depending on how much air is in your flour, cup measurements can vary by A LOT). But for people without kitchen scales, 270 grams of flour was about 2 cups and 3 Tablespoons for me.

Cappelletti in Brodo (Soup with Cheese-Stuffed Pasta)

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Cooking with Grace

In Italian, cappelletti means “little hats,” and that’s what these pasta shapes are supposed to represent. They are very similar to tortellini, and actually I couldn’t find any information about what makes the two different. Both types are connected to the legend of a man who created the ring-shaped stuffed pasta, inspired by the image of a woman’s belly button (the details of the story vary throughout different parts of Italy). I would definitely prefer to think of them as little hats.

Cappelletti are usually filled with ground or finely chopped chicken or pork and ricotta cheese, and seasoned with nutmeg traditionally. This recipe for cappelletti in broth is actually very popular around Christmas, but the hot soup is comforting and delicious at any time. The cappelletti can also be cooked in boiling water, then drained and served with tomato sauce (my recipe is here!) or cream sauce.

I don’t have a pasta machine, but I like to make pasta by hand (like these ravioli I made a few months ago). I really don’t think you need a pasta machine to do it! I make mine by cracking an egg into a hole that I make in a pile of flour. It is really important to have the egg at room temperature, because if it is too cold, the pasta dough will be too stiff to roll out. This isn’t as important if you are using a pasta machine, but if you’re rolling pasta by hand it really makes a difference!

I mix the egg up with a fork, incorporating the flour little by little. By the time the dough is stiff but not sticky anymore, I am usually left with a bit of extra flour, which I use to make sure that the dough doesn’t stick to the counter when I knead it or roll it out.

You can use something heavy to roll the pasta out thin. If you have a rolling pin, then that’s good but sometimes I use a can of beans or a ceramic mug, which works really nicely too. Just make it as thin as you can (but don’t worry because you can flatten each individual circle for making the cappelletti when you cut them out).

I made the filling by stirring together ricotta, grated parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, and a little nutmeg.

Then I formed the little hats. Here’s a picture guide I made:

Once you get the hang of how to do it, it’s really fun!

I dropped the pastas into boiling broth, and cooked them until the broth started boiling again and all the cappelletti floated to the top:

The nutmeg in the ricotta filling really gives this dish a unique, old-fashioned flavor

I think the pasta by itself is a little heavy (or maybe it’s just too easy to eat all of them because they are so delicious!) but in the light broth they make a perfect, comforting winter soup.

You can serve it with extra grated parmesan and pepper on top if you want to. My recipe makes about 15-20 pieces of pasta, and the soup serves two to three people.

Cappelletti in Brodo (Soup with Cheese-Stuffed Pasta)

Ingredients:

1 egg

¼ cup whole-milk ricotta

2 Tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

a pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

3 cups chicken broth or vegetable broth

Directions:

Put the flour onto a cutting board or counter, and make a hole in the middle of the flour, then crack the egg into it.

Use a fork to mix up the egg and gradually mix in the flour (you may not use all of the flour there, you can leave some to knead and roll out the dough with). The dough should be roll-able but not sticky.

Roll it as thin as possible (you can use a pasta machine for this, but I just roll it out with the side of a drinking glass or you can use a rolling pin if you have that).

Make the filling by mixing together ricotta, parmesan, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Cut circle shapes out of the pasta dough and flatten them in your hands. Put a little filling inside each one, then fold one side over to cover the ricotta and seal edges together with a little water. Pinch the right and left sides together to make a ring shape.

Bring the broth to a boil and add the pasta. Cook until the soup comes to a boil and the cappelletti all float to the top. Serve hot with a little more grated parmesan cheese on top if you want.

Cooking with Grace

The Adventures of a Foodie College Student

Cinnamon Almond Twists

Stir-Fried Starch Noodles

Pasteria (Italian Easter Wheat Pie)

Congee (Rice Porridge)

Chana Masala (Chickpea Curry)

How to Make Bread (The Easy Way)

Cappelletti in Brodo (Soup with Cheese-Stuffed Pasta)

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