With a surprise ingredient, there's no question over the incredibly flavour. Garnish with edible gold flakes to really make this pasta dish impress!
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
Tagliatelle:
- 300 g flour
- pesto:
- 50 g rocket
- 60 g sundried tomatoes
- 25 g pine nuts
- 50 g parmesan
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt
- depending on the sharpness of the rocket and the sundried tomatoes I may add the following ingredient to balance the flavour: honey.
Schita:
- schita is a popular recipe of my region and it's no less and no more than a fried batter-like mix
- 200 g flour
- water and milk (until you get the right consistency)
- a pinch of salt
- rosemary
- 0.2g edible gold flakes
- 0 salt
Method
- Mix flour and eggs and kneed with a pinch of salt until you have a consistent dough, then let it rest.
- Put a frying pan with a thin layer of oil (ideally sunflower seeds) in it on the cooker, then take a bowl and mix flour, water and a pinch of milk until you get the ideal consistency for the schita mixture.
- When the oil is boiling hot, put a scoop of mixture into the frying pan and cook the schita for 5 minutes, then turn it over carefully and cook the other side until you get that crunchy feeling. When it's ready, put it on a kitchen roll and dry the oil.
- Grate the parmesan and then put all the ingredients for pesto in a food processor (ideally, the blade should be put in the freezer 30 minutes before using it) and process them (it's a 30 seconds job) until you reach the desired consistency for the pesto.
- If needed, add some parmesan, extra virgin olive oil, honey or sugar to reach the desired consistency and flavour. When I buy those ingredients here, you got a pesto with a different taste every time, so balancing them is essential and must be done improvising a last-minute solution.
- Now take the dough and make it as thin as you can with the rolling pin (on a flat surface with tons of flour on it), then roll it and cut tagliatelle.
- At some stage in the process, I'd say halfway, it'd be wise to put a saucepan full of water on the hob and let it reach boiling temperature.
- Throw tagliatelle into boiling water, cook them for 5 minutes and then start plating, which is a kinda fast process: with a round cookie cutter, I cut a circle of schita and put it on the plate, then I cover it with a portion of pasta with pesto (you should not see the circle, hence the surprise of the name).
- On the side, I put some drops of schita (I cut the remaining schita with a drop-shaped cookie cutter) with a pinch of sauce and some tiny slices of sundried tomatoes on it.
- Edible gold flakes on top of everything.
Notes
By Fabio Montagna for Masterchef Ireland
