I love the vibrant colours and earthy sweetness from beetroot and really wanted to incorporate it in a pasta dish. Most beetroot pasta dough are made by incorporating beetroot puree which is time consuming to make, potentially quite messy, and most importantly the addition of puree also changes the consistency of the pasta dough fairly significantly. For this recipe, I'm experimenting using beetroot powder instead which worked a treat without all the mess and the cooked pasta was of the right consistency and perfectly al dente! The beetroot pasta dough is used to make prawn tortellinis, paired with a clear and soothing chicken and prawn broth (brodo) with extra prawns and asparagus added for that sweet crunch.
Difficulty: Medium
Time: 2.5 hours
Serves: 2
Ingredients
Beetroot Pasta Dough
- 95g flour
- 5g beetroot powder
- 1 egg
Prawn Mousse
- 250g fresh prawns peeled*
- 1/2 egg white
- 30ml thickened cream
- 1/2 tsp finely chopped dill
- 1/2 tsp lemon zest
- 1/2 tbsp finely chopped fennel fronds
- salt
- pepper
Brodo
- 1 onion sliced
- 1 carrot sliced
- 1 leek sliced
- 1/2 kg chicken wings
- heads and shells from the prawns above
- 2 tbsp kombu dashi**
- 1 ltr chicken stock
- oil
- salt
- pepper
Garnish
- 1 bunch of asparagus
- 3 whole prawns*
* Reserve the prawns shells for the stock.
** Japanse stock made from seaweed and available pre-made in a bottle available in most Japanese or Asian grocery. It's lovely way to add the umami seaweed flavour to build on the depth of the stock.
Method
1. Start the broth by sautéing the onion, carrot, leek in a pot with oil over medium heat until softened and lightly caramelised for a few minutes. Add the chicken wings and prawn shells and heads to the pan and top up with enough chicken stock to just cover the vegetables and protein in the pot. As I'm keeping this broth fairly light so won't be caramelising the chicken and the prawn shells. Cover the broth with lid and cook over low heat over the next 2+ hours.
2. Mix the flour and the eggs well to form a dough. Knead for 2-3 minutes or until smooth. Cover with a plastic wrap and set aside to rest.
3. Roughly chop the prawns. Place half of the prawns with cream and egg white in a food processor and process into a smooth mousse, scoop it out into a mixing bowl. Add the residual half of the prawns, fennel fronds, dill, lemon zest, salt and pepper and stir to combine well with the prawn mousse.
4. Set up the pasta machine to the widest setting and lightly dust the pasta dough and the machine with flour. Feed the dough through the machine, fold the pasta in half before feeding it through the machine again until you have a well combined and strong sheet. Gradually narrow setting until the dough is about 1mm thick. Cut out rounds from pasta sheets using a 7cm pastry cutter.
5. Place a table spoon of prawn mixture onto the round pasta sheet, fold the pasta dough into half over the filling and twist the end around to stick it together to make it into a tortellini. Repeat until finished.
6. Prepare a bowl of ice water, poach the asparagus in the broth until it just cooked, then soak it into the bowl of ice water to stop it from cooking further. Slice the stems and cut the spears into half. Set aside.
7. Poach the prawn to be used for garnish into the broth until just cooked. Cut it into bite size and set aside.
7. In a new pot, bring 2ltr of water to boil with 1tsp of salt. Add the tortellini in batches and cook for approximately 7 minutes until it's floating and the pasta is al dente and cooked through. Continue until all the pasta is cooked.
8. Place some of the sliced asparagus stems at the bottom of a bowl, topped with tortellini, sliced prawns and asparagus spears.
8. Pass the broth through a sieve (and double stock bag in if you want a clearer broth) to filter out the impurities. Pour into the pasta bowl, serve and enjoy while it's hot.
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