Little Green Surprises
Author: Jon Bennion, Montana Free Press
I’m willing to bet that you have a dish, or many dishes, that you associate with the holiday season. Making these foods any other time of year would almost feel out of place, or at least undermine that feeling you get when you taste and smell something that is usually reserved for a special occasion.
More than 10 years ago I decided that 100% scratch-made lasagna would become a Christmas or New Year’s tradition in our house. No boxed noodles, no jarred sauce and no pre-shredded cheese. It requires a lot of kitchen time to pull it all together, but it definitely checks the right boxes for something delicious and special.
A 2023 trip to Italy with a focus on food allowed me to taste lasagna at its birthplace in Emilia-Romagna. At a quaint trattoria in Bologna, I ordered a lasagna bolognese that blew my mind and gave me a major source of inspiration.
One fun and defining element of the dish is the signature green pasta sheets made with an egg-based pasta dough. The dried lasagna sheets you get in boxes from the store are semolina-based pasta, which lends a different texture. These silky green pasta sheets from Bologna are a far superior ingredient, and a key structural element for building an out-of-this-world lasagna.
Green pasta is not as hard to make as you think, and it gets its color from natural ingredients. At different times I have used blanched and shocked parsley or spinach to blend in with the eggs before incorporating into flour. Surprisingly, the flokavors from either are removed once blended with the flour. You are left only with the beautiful color and the nutritional benefits of the added greens.
These green pasta sheets can either be the foundation of a lasagna recipe you already have, or you can wait for my next column, which will share a special Montana lentil and mushroom “bolognese” I developed that serves as the other main ingredient of a vegetarian lasagna that will please people of all diets. Save this recipe and stay on the lookout for a Wide Open Table column on Dec. 30 to make a New Year’s meal to start 2025 off right.
That lentil and mushroom sauce recipe will require some Montana-grown organic lentils that you can get from Timeless Seeds out of Ulm. You’ll want a small package of both Black Beluga lentils you can order
(https://shop.timelessfood.com/collections/organic-lentils/products/organic-black-beluga-lentils
and Spanish Brown lentils you can order:
https://shop.timelessfood.com/collections/organic-lentils/products/organic-pardina-lentils
This green pasta dough recipe is not solely for lasagna sheets. You can make beautiful noodles, filled pasta or a fun pasta shape I’m including in this column as a bonus option.
The shape is called “sorpresine,” an Italian word that means “little surprise.” It could easily be called the “Grinch who stole the pasta filling,” since the surprise is that they have no filling in them. If you are anxious to try making green pasta and get some practice before the next column completes the lasagna recipe, green sorpresine with your favorite pasta sauce could be a great holiday option.
If you have some time off this holiday season, consider spending a chunk of it in the kitchen to make something for your family and friends that they will be talking about all next year. It’s a great gift to give.
GREEN PASTA DOUGH RECIPE
3 whole eggs plus one egg yolk
5 oz. fresh spinach
3-4 cups 00 (extra fine) or all-purpose flour
You’ll need a pasta machine.
Fill a medium saucepan 2/3 with water and bring to a boil. Fill a large mixing bowl with ice water and place it off to the side. Put all your fresh spinach into the boiling water for about 15 seconds, making sure it’s all submerged. With a slotted spoon, remove the blanched spinach and place it in the ice water. This will help preserve the beautiful green color.
Once it’s cooled, remove the spinach and wring out as much of the water as you can. Roughly chop the spinach and place it in a high-speed blender with three whole eggs (shelled, of course) and one egg yolk. Blend until you don’t see any large pieces of spinach and the contents are green.
Pour 3 cups of flour onto your counter in a mound. Make a large well in the flour with the bottom of a bowl and then add the spinach/egg mixture. With a fork, make small circular motions in the eggs to break the yolks and pull little bits of flour into the center. As you continue doing this, the center will become thicker. Pull in larger amounts of flour and smash it into the wetter center with your fork.
At a certain point, your hands are the better utensil going forward. Smash, roll, stretch and refold the shaggy dough into a ball and start kneading for 10 minutes. If it seems too wet, add more flour. It should be smooth and not sticky by the end of the 10-minute knead. Allow it to rest for 30 minutes in plastic wrap or a sealed bag.
Cut the dough into quarters and work with 1/4 of the whole at a time. Smash the dough you are working with on the counter to start the thinning process before you use the pasta machine. Put the dough through on the pasta machine’s thickest setting. Add a little flour to the outside if you sense any stickiness. Fold the dough like French doors and run it through again. This continues the kneading process and gets you smoother dough.
I run the dough through each of the settings at least 2-3 times, refolding each time with the French door method. The thickness of your final dough depends on the kind of pasta you are making. With most machines, I rarely take it to the thinnest setting. I usually stop one step ahead of that point. On your final thickness, run it through a few times without folding for a smooth dough. Repeat for the other hunks of pasta dough.
HOW TO MAKE LASAGNA SHEETS
Once you have followed the directions up to this point, you might already be done with your lasagna sheets. The amount of pasta this recipe creates is a pretty good size for a 9”x13” pan or baking dish.
Opinions differ about whether you should pre-cook the pasta sheets before assembling the lasagna. I have done it both ways, and both work well. If you want to layer in uncooked lasagna sheets as you assemble the dish, keep in mind that uncooked pasta will absorb more moisture than pre-cooked. If you are starting with a fairly wet sauce, you might be okay without cooking the sheets. The pasta itself cooks nicely in the oven as the lasagna bakes.
If you prefer to pre-cook the lasagna sheets, it is a bit of a process. You will place the pasta sheets one at a time into boiling water for 30-60 seconds. Remove very carefully from the hot water so as not to burn yourself, and to keep them from tearing (they are delicate). Shock them in a large bowl of ice water, much as you did the spinach. Remove from the ice-water bath and dry well with a clean kitchen towel. On a large baking tray, place the lasagna sheets between lightly oiled layers of plastic wrap (I use olive oil) to keep them from sticking to each other.
HOW TO MAKE SORPRESINE
Sorpresine are made by rolling out your pasta dough with a pasta machine to the second-to-thinnest setting. You don’t want the dough to be so thin that the sorpresine can’t keep its shape. This should be done in batches, as you don’t want the sheets to dry before you can shape the pasta.
Once you have a sheet of pasta to work with, use a pizza cutter to make 1 1/2” squares. You want them to be as close to square-shaped as possible, since rectangles will lead to odd-looking sorpresine. To fold the sorpresine, first take two opposite corners of the square and pinch them together. If it won’t stick, use just a touch of water. Now bring the other two opposing corners together to meet in the other direction, pointing away from the first pinch. You can use your thumb to indent the middle of the square to help bring those second corners together.
The shape should resemble something that ought to have filling in it, but you can tell your family or friends the Grinch stole it.
Article Images
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PhotoCredit: Jon Bennion
Image 1 Caption: Logo
Image 2 Caption: Green pasta
Image 3 Caption: Lasagne sheets
