Helen Bartunek's
Corzetti Pasta
What a delightful surprise to discover that we can
make traditional Corzetti Pasta using Rycraft cookie stamps!
This recipe is from Helen Bartunek who says:
I got the best results using my hand crank pasta machine to roll the dough
thin enough, so that the corzetti cooked in about 15 minutes.
Ingredients
For the corzetti:
1 Rycraft cookie stamp #468 Celtic Four Square
2 ½ cups (300 g) of flour
1 egg
4 tablespoons (50 ml) of lukewarm water
4 tablespoons (50 ml) of dry white wine
For the marjoram pesto:
½ cup (60 g) of pine nuts
½ cup (40 g) of walnuts kernel
30/40 marjoram leaves
4 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons of parmesan cheese
salt t.t.
Method
For corzetti:
Put the flour on the working surface and make a hole in the middle like a volcano.
Open the egg in the centre of the crater and beat slightly with a fork, add the white wine and water, a pinch of salt and start mixing the liquids. Then start adding flour to the mix gently digging the side of the crater with the fork. Little by little the dough will harden.
When the dough starts “staying together” dig your hands and start kneading it, blending and pressing with the lower part of your palm for many times.
If it remains too dry and in flakes add a small quantity of water just wetting your palms. Repeat if needed until you get a dough soft and elastic. You can check if its elastic enough putting a finger in the dough: if the dough returns in its previous shape and the hole disappears it’s ready.
Let it rest under a humid tea cloth for half an hour.
On a surface well dusted roll the dough in a thin sheet with the help of a pasta machine (I have the old Imperia pasta machine of my granny) or with a rolling pin.
Stamp the dough with the cookie stamp. Be careful to dust the dough and the stamp with some flour to avoid that the dough sticks to the stamp. Then use a 3″ scallop cookie cutter to cut out the stamped dough.
You can boil the corzetti immediately or leave them to air-drying and eat them after some hours.
For the marjoram pesto:
Blend in a mixer the pine nuts, the walnuts, the marjoram leaver and half of the olive oil until obtaining a thick and consistent paste. Put the pesto in a bowl and add the remaining half of olive oil and the parmesan cheese. Add salt to taste.
Boil corzetti in a big pan of salty water for about 7-10 minutes (cooking time depends on the thickness of the pasta, taste before draining). Drain the corzetti and set aside ½ a cup of boiling water.
Put the corzetti in a skillet jointly with the marjoram pesto and the ½ cup of boiling water. Stir gently and cook for a couple of minutes at low fire until the sauce is creamy.
Before serving decorate with some leaf of marjoram, a fistful of pine nuts and a drizzle of olive oil.
