SC - In a pasta making mood

[Philip & Susan Troy]

david friedman wrote:
> 
> >How about period dishes? I'm thinking of homemade
> >pasta for my "Grande Feast".
> 
> My favorite period pasta is rishta; you can find the recipe in the
> _Miscellany_. I've never done it with a pasta machine, but I suppose
> you could.

I assume you could. I prepared rishta in quantity for an event a while
back, using dried Chinese eggless noodles (the pasta in rishta is a
simple wheat-flour-and water dough, IIRC), and it was good, but I think 
I'd prefer a somewhat more saucy dish; the final stages of cooking
involve letting the dish rest over low heat for an hour or so. I get the
impression that in that hour, the eggless noodles will absorb almost all
liquid in the dish, almost without the actual liquid quantity mattering.
You get a sort of moist kugel, unless you keep the pasta quantities controlled.

For that matter, does rishta, which has so many other ingredients,
really count as a pasta dish?
 
> Does anyone know if extruded pasta is period? As best I recall, none
> of the period descriptions I know imply that that is how it is being
> made.

I think I've seen modern, secondary references (maybe Anderson's "The
Foods of China"?)  to noodles made by drizzling a batter through a
funnel or some kind of pastry bag in period China, but I suspect that's
not really what you're talking about. 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com