Veal Meatball Carbonara

sem•o•li•na

noun /ˌseməˈlēnə/

1. The hard grains left after the milling of flour, used in puddings and in pasta

When I saw semolina pasta at Healthy Supplies my first thought was ‘Oh my god, I have to make pasta!’ Semolina flour, which means ‘semi milled’ is the durum wheat flour used in Southern Italy to make dried pasta.

It’s been a while since I first tried to make pasta and I haven’t really gone back since. The first time was a disaster, I had only just got into baking and wasn’t really familiar with dough textures so my dough was far too dry and there was far too much of it! I was given a pasta machine by my boyfriend’s mother which got me excited, but my kitchen doesn’t have a table or a proper surface to mount the machine to. This meant that my boyfriend had to hold down the machine while I manoeuvred around him to feed the pasta in and turn the handle. I was making ravioli so I wanted the pasta to be fairly thin, but because it was so dry, it kept crumbling in the machine and I couldn’t go to the desired thickness.

After half an hour of fighting with the dough and the machine, I gave up and made my pasta. I cut rough squares, put a tablespoon of filling (ricotta and spinach if memory serves me correctly), brushed the edges with egg white and put another square on top. I cooked them for three minutes, and ate them without a dressing as we were both too tired to do anything else. The pasta was too thick and tasted too floury, some of the ravioli weren’t properly sealed so the filling had disappeared and it was all very disappointing.

We got rid of the pasta machine and resorted to dried pasta from the supermarket after that. I thought I would give it another go with the semolina flour. Most recipes call for semolina flour and water as the dough mixture. Since semolina is coarse and crumbly, I had major flashbacks from my first try with pasta, so I used half semolina, half buckwheat, and one egg yolk.

I went for buckwheat because it has a lovely nutty flavour that I think will work really well with pasta, particularly Carbonara which is what I’m using this pasta for. Instead of using the pasta machine, I hand rolled my pasta. And you know what? It’s a thousand times easier (for me at least) than the machine! I thought I wouldn’t be able to get the dough thick enough, but it’s not true, I made ravioli the other day with the same dough recipe and could read newspaper print through the dough. Hand-rolling is the way to go for me. :)

Anyways for this recipe I made linguine by rolling the dough to a rectangle shape. I then folded the dough on top of each other and floured each layer so they don’t stick together, to make a smaller rectangle which I used to cut the strips.

I made mine less wide than the image above, but this shows you how I made the strips. If you’re using semolina and water, you can make the linguine then hang them to dry. I just let mine sit for 10 minutes or so while I carried on with the rest of the dish.

I had some veal mince which I used to make meatballs with to fry with bacon to go with my carbonara. I used veal because beef, lamb and venison are too strong and heavy for the rich sauce. Alternatives I would use pork or chicken mince instead, but veal has the lovely sweet flavour and retains its juices much better than pork and chicken. So it works perfectly! The veal is a rare breed variety that I got from my local farmers market and had a soft pink colour when raw. If you live in the UK, you can buy rare breed veal mince here.

The pasta was coarse enough to carry the rich sauce, with a slight nutty flavour from the buckwheat which complimented the veal and salty bacon. I made this on a Wednesday night after work and can’t express how satisfying it was, both in flavour and from making my own pasta. Try it!

Ingredients

½ cup Semolina flour

½ cup Buckwheat flour

2 Egg yolks

a bit of cream

200g Veal mince

dried Parsley

1 small Onion, diced

2 cloves Garlic, finely sliced

3 rashers Bacon, diced

zest of Lemon

Salt & Pepper

Olive Oil

Recipe

Combine both flours into a bowl, make a well in the centre for the egg yolk, a pinch of salt and a bit of olive oil. Use the tips of your fingers to slowly combine the flour and egg, add a bit of water if needed. Mix well until it comes together. Knead well on a floured surface until smooth. Place the dough in the fridge for 10 minutes or so.

Dived dough into two and start rolling out. The dough may at first seem very crumbly, but the combination of flour with the egg should give it some elasticity. I found I could roll each half into an area that is 30cm high by 15-20cm wide. The pasta was about 3 or 4mm thick. Flour the surface and fold, then slice into 8mm strips. Toss lightly with your fingers to straighten again, and leave to dry until required.

Start making the meatballs by combining the onion, parsley, salt and pepper into a bowl. Once combine roll to make 3cm wide meatballs. Heat a large frying pan with some oil, and add the meatballs with the bacon. Fry each side of the meatballs until brown and starting to crisp on each side. Half way through cooking, add sliced garlic (you don’t want the garlic to burn).

When the meatballs are cooked and the bacon is crisp, add the cream to form the basis of the sauce.

Boil water in a saucepan large enough to fit the linguine. And cook for 3-5 minutes, the cooking time varies as it’s freshly made, so you need to keep checking every 30 seconds after 3 mins is up. When it’s cooked drain and add sauce to the pasta with the other egg yolk. Toss quickly to coat before the egg scrambles, then assemble onto a plate with grated parmesan and freshly ground black pepper. Eat.

http://www.healthysupplies.co.uk/