How to Invent a Type of Colored Pasta
Colored pasta is made of a mixture of basic pasta dough and colorful vegetable puree. While green spinach pasta and red tomato noodles are relatively common, you can invent any number of colored pastas in your own kitchen. Choose your favorite colored vegetable and experiment with making different batches of pasta. Try different rolling methods to make variegated pasta and invent an entirely new artful pasta dish. Does this Spark an idea?
Things You'll Need
- Colorful vegetables
- Pot with steamer insert
- Stove
- Knife
- Food processor
- Coffee filters or cheesecloth
- Flour
- Eggs
- Bowl
- Fork
- Pasta roller
Instructions
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1
Steam colorful vegetables until they are soft. Choose a vegetable with dark colors throughout, like purple beets, orange carrots or dark spinach. The steaming time for each vegetable will depend on the type of vegetable and the size of the pieces you are steaming.
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2
Cut or chop the softened vegetables into 1-inch pieces or bits. Place the pieces into a food processor and blend them until they become a smooth paste.
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3
Drain the vegetable puree through coffee filters or pieces of cheesecloth to remove as much water as possible. You will be left with a thick and colorful paste.
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4
Beat two eggs in a bowl with a fork until they become a uniform yellow color. Stir in the drained vegetable puree.
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5
Pile up 2 cups of flour onto a clean counter. Make the flour into a hill shape, then form a cup or well in the top of the hill with your fingers. This will look like a flour volcano. Pour the egg and vegetable mixture into the well at the top of the hill.
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6
Mix the egg and flour together, beginning with the flour around the egg mixture and incorporating more and more flour as you mix. The texture will go from liquid to oatmeal-like to solid dough as you add more flour to the mix. Keep mixing in the flour until your dough is the texture of smooth clay. There is no way to tell exactly how much flour you will need, as every batch of pasta is different, so you may leave some on the table or you may need to add additional flour to the mix.
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7
Knead the dough until the texture is smooth and elastic. Set the dough aside, covered in plastic wrap, for about half an hour. Cut and roll the dough in your pasta machine in the usual manner.
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Tips & Warnings
Make two batches of pasta and color one. Lay strips of different colors next to each other and squash them together, or lay small blobs of colored dough on top of other colored sheets of dough, then run them through a pasta roller. You will create artistic multi-colored pasta.
References
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
