Crafting Altura's Stuffed Pastas

by Caitlin Collins

Pasta-making is an art requiring patience and practice, but stuffed pastas can be especially challenging. Luckily, our pasta expert Tim Stewart is great at crafting stuffed pastas such as ravioli.

Altura currently has two stuffed pastas on the menu -- foraged mushroom ravioli and squab mezzaluna. Watch Tim as he carefully makes our house pastas!

FORAGED MUSHROOM RAVIOLI
Stinging Nettle, Hedgehog Mushrooms, Wild Onion Oil

The foraged mushroom ravioli is currently being served in a stinging nettle dough. The nettles are chosen mostly for their vivid green color, but you can also smell them in the dough. Nettle flavor also comes through more strongly than other greens such as spinach, though it is still fairly faint.

Tim takes the rolled-out dough made of nettles, egg yolks, and flour, and feeds it through the pasta machine. "The first thing I'm trying to do is get my dough in one solid sheet, and the second thing is to get it all the same width, about the width of the pasta maker. Once my sheets are together, my next task is to make it uniform," he says.

Altura Pasta Expert Tim Stewart Makes Gnocchi

by Caitlin Collins

"A secret to making good pasta is using the best eggs you can find," says Tim. "That's probably the most important thing."

Five days a week, Tim Stewart comes in to the restaurant early in the morning primarily to make Altura's pasta. There are currently six different pastas between the dinner and tasting menus, each with a different filling and/or accompaniment. One of the mainstays at the restaurant, however, is our gnocchi.

YUKON GOLD POTATO GNOCCHI

Abruzzese Style Ragu of Lamb and Beef, Parmigiano

Gnocchi, a traditional Italian dumpling, is a light fluffy pasta that we make from yukon gold potatoes. It is currently being served with a ragu of lamb and beef that has a slight bit of heat from Calabrian chili oil.

"I treat this like a pastry almost-- you don't want to overwork it," advises Tim. The secret to light and fluffy gnocchi is not using too much flour and not working it too much. Tim chops the dough to incorporate instead of kneading it the whole time, which would stretch and tease the gluten in the flour, making it tough.

Tim cuts egg yolk, flour, butter, parmesan into more flour with a bench scraper.