I OFTEN DREAMT to make past with flours that were not of wheat or traditional grains and the class of chef and food blogger Shamira Gatta was the answer to the quest. She is a real master chef and watching her make pasta out of peas and chickpeas flours was an experience I recommend. The results, by the way, were remarkable too. A few tricks I learned, along with the pleasure to see a professional at work, were that you can make fresh spaghetti, penne and maccheroni or ravioli basically out of any type of legumes that you can first dry and then grind into flour. The second trick I recollected is that the dough, no matter what you use to make it, must rest before you work on it. The more, the better. It will be more elastic and manage it into becoming your favorite kind of pasta will be much easier .
THE MENU we had to be confronted with was composed of peas flour tagliatelle, chickpeas flour ravioli filled with potatoes and saffron and cream puffs made of chestnuts flour and filled with ricotta cheese and dark chocolate. A bit of sweet at the end of a hard working class is always to be appreciated…
To make the pasta, Shamira used a machine that is quite common in Italian kitchens, but the quantities I report down here are good even if you want to do it in the traditional way: by hand 