What the Fork???

This is what people said when they saw the pasta dish I made today. What I whipped up today for lunch was a Christmas inspired pasta dish: Green and Red Pasta, made without using any food coloring.

For starters, I needed to find an ingredient that would give me the desired red color I wanted. So, I settled on using beet juice. I got the juice from draining canned beets and mixing it in with flour and eggs until I got the desired consistency. There really was no recipe that I used for the dough; I just eyeballed it and adjusted the ingredients as needed.

Here is the dough being rolled out. Like I do with most of my pasta's, I took it down to the #7 notch.

Here is the end result. Not exactly bright red, but everyone got the concept of what I was wanting to do.

Next was trying to find some ingredients to use for the green dough. With this, I ran into a few problem; there are not many items that can be used without being overpowering. I had thought about using some pureed chives and basil, but after tasting the puree, I realized it was was too strong and would not be enjoyable. So, I went to the fridge and found some Brussels sprouts that I picked right before the first snow. In a pan, I boiled the sprouts in salted water until tender. When ready, I pureed them in a food processor and added in some seasonings along with a little olive oil and a tiny bit of water. The puree came out great. After combining it with the flour and eggs, I came out with the product pictured above. The flavor was surprisingly very subtle.

Passing the dough through the pasta roller.

Dough ready to be cut.

All the Brussels sprouts dough cut up and floured.

After boiling the pasta for just a few minutes, I transferred them to a saute pan that I had shallots, tomato and garlic in. A very simple dish that is colorful and festive. Unfortunately, the Brussels sprouts dough it not a darker green, but again, everyone understood the basic idea.