Nona dora's red chile fettuccine with cilantro pesto

1 batch

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
1½ cup Semolina flour
1 cup All-purpose flour
3 tablespoons Ground red pasilla (heaping) or Anaheim chile
4 Well-washed bunches cilantro including stems but not roots
6 Garlic cloves
Toasted pine nuts
⅓ cup Olive oil
2 Eggs
2 tablespoons ;Water
½ cup Pine nuts
½ cup Olive oil
½ cup Grated Parmesan cheese
Whole cilantro leaves

Directions

PASTA

CILANTRO PESTO

GARNISHES

Sift the flours and ground chile into a mound. Make a well in the center and add the olive oil, eggs and water. Work the flour and liquid into a dough and knead until it feels like your earlobe. (Add more water if dough needs to be softer, more flour to make it stiffer.) Gather into a ball, then let dough rest in a lightly floured bowl for 20 to 30 minutes.

While the dough is resting, combine the pesto ingredients in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and puree. Set aside.

(The cilantro pesto can be stored in the freezer or topped with a thin film of olive oil and stored in the refrigerator.) Roll the dough out by hand to a thickness of 1/16", or put through a pasta maker; let rest another 10 minutes. Roll up jelly-roll style and cut into noodles or put through pasta maker on fettuccine setting. Cook the noodles in a large pot of boiling water until just tender, about 2 to 3 minutes. Drain.

Pour sauce over the pasta and toss thoroughly. Garnish with toasted pine nuts and fresh cilantro leaves, if desired.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

The authors write: "As a young child, Kathy Kagel stood on a chair in front of the stove at the family's summer house in Maine to help the housekeeper cook. Now she stands at the stove of her own restaurant, the informal and lively Cafe Pasqual's, in Santa Fe.

"Kathy first saw Santa Fe in 1969, as she drove across country, but she didn't return for good until ten years later. Her first endeavor was a catering business specializing in Chinese food, but when a small restaurant in the center of town became available, Kathy bought it. She named it Cafe Pasqual's, after the folk saint of cooks and kitchens - a monk who, according to legend, was so bad at prayer he was banished to the monastery kitchen, where he turned out to be a splendid cook.

"Kathy was drawn immediately to Southwestern cooking. Natives working in Cafe Pasqual's kitchen became used to her lifting the lids of the pots or asking how their families made a particular dish. 'I worry that with the chic and trendy interest in Southwestern cooking, tradition will be lost,' she says. This traditional cooking style, developed by the hard-working poor, is based on simple ingredients such as red and green chiles, pinto beans, garlic, onions, blue and yellow cornmeal, and white cheese. 'And they never use ground beef,' she adds, 'it's always shredded.'" From Kathy Kagel of Cafe Pasqual's/Santa Fe, NM in "Cooking with Herbs" by Emelie Tolley and Chris Mead. New York: Clarkson N.

Potter, Inc., 1989. Pg. 55. Posted by Cathy Harned.

Submitted By CATHY HARNED On 10-04-94

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