IMPERIA or: let's do homemade pasta. With the Power of Lord.

Wannabe pasta-maker? IMPERIA: this is the magic word.
Imperia is a beautiful stainless steel machine look-alike the one produced in the thirties here in Italy. Yes, they make it to date, and sell it with an identical packaging. Just below the Imperia box:

Now they sell also a motorized version, but, bedda matri, don't buy this american rubbish. I know that in your daydream you can make pasta pushing on a remote control from the sofa, with a 2 litre cola in a hand and soaking a tortilla in chili sauce with the other hand. Sure, you have just the big toe to push the remote control, izz enough. Make an effort, there's an extraordinary motive power in your arms and it's free! Use it.

My grandmother Matilda called it "The power of the Lord". Ok, when she turn off the light she tell me "let's use the light of the Lord". Fortunately the Lord did not claimed for bill payment, until now.

But stop with thick talk, we have to make homemade pasta with Imperia.

You need:

- Durum wheat. Pastry flour will give you a pasta good to use as glue, a good work for your dentist. Manitoba is good, but durum wheat is better.
- water
- Imperia
- the power of your arm, or, if you are that kind of people, the Power of Lord. Bedda matri. May be if you are that kind of people, you will feel to owe somebody to Him. You could offer Him a dish of pasta, why not? My grandmother Matilda... ok, I will tell you nex time.

You have to make a hard dough, mixing water and wheat. Add water enough to do a ball good for the IMPERIA steel rolls. Pass the dough throug the rolls many times, until comes out from the machine a smooth and thick sheet.

In the picture above I make a dough with water and cuttlefish ink, good for seafood pasta.
With Imperia you can do tagliatelle with the sheet:


And now the hard point for you americans glue-eaters: to guess the right cooking point.
Boil a lot of water. Add salt. And add pasta. The pasta will sink.
When it comes up, it's good, OK? When floats, you have to keep it out of boiling water, immediatly!! OK?

Just now! FLOATING PASTA!! GO and drain it, NOW! GODDAMN, why you are reading this stupid post? GOOO!!!

Enjoy!

Grandma's Matilda potato rissoles given at death's door

Bedda matri, it's a lot of time that I don't give to you Americans a good recipe to solace your sad palates.

This blog have had an astonishing outcome, millions of people beg me for another recipe: «please, please! Give us something to cook this Sunday, we are bored with Thanksgiving turkey! Please enlighten us!»
We Sicilians are very generous people. So, let's get the Sicilian-English dictionary and - herd, get your cookware: I'm going to lay down the Recipe.

There was a specific circumstance for my grandma to prepare the potato rissoles. It were when my father beat me. My grandma Matilda always prevented my dad from beating me. She hid me under her skirts and said him "Si t'arrìsichi a tuccari u picciriddu t'ammazzu! Comu ti resi a vita accussì ta lievu!", that in good english sounds: "If you try to beat him I'll kill you, I gave you life and I'll take away!".
Often it turned out my grandma beating my dad with a broom.
Later, my Grandma did the potato rissoles to solace me.

And now, I will say you how she did the best potato rissoles in the world, as she peach me when she had an operation to her knee and she think to be at death's door.

So, that's the recipe of :

Grandma Matilda's potato rissoles given at death's door


Ingredients for two.
For two. A Sicilian never cook for two persons. The minimum is at least five. But you Americans are all singles, you don't marry and hire out children. So you probably will cook this rissoles to make a splash with your girlfriend. Anyway.

You need:
- 1 Kg of potatoes
- parsley
- 2 eggs
- a dish full of grated parmigiano
- 4 cloves of garlic
- black pepper
- a little scrape of nutmeg
- a spoon of durum wheat
- grated stale bread

Boil the potatoes, let them cool in fresh water, mush up and mix with eggs, minced parsley and garlic, parmigiano, ground pepper, scrape of nutmeg. Now, little by little add the grated bread, until you can make a ball with the dough. Make a flat oval rissole, cover with the durum wheat and deep fry in olive or peanut oil.

To be eaten at burn temperature.

It's quite simple, doesn't it? No, it's difficoult, you presumptuous person! You have to find out the perfect equilibrium between hard and mushy. This is the secret that my grandma matilda peach me at the death's door. Two days after the operation she was still alive and she asked me to compleatly forget the secret. So, still now, when I want a perfect potato rissole, I ask to my grandma.