Aki put together a new pasta dough for me to work with--miso and brown rice flour. The dough is perfumed with a touch of sesame oil which in conjunction with the miso permeated the kitchen while I roled it this afternoon. I began by making noodles with our chitarra, though I was constantly thinking about using it as a wrapper, particularly for foie gras. Since I did not have any foie gras on hand, I cut into our pig trotter and truffle roulade and used that instead. I roled out a large sheet of the dough and placed the pork roulades on top, finally covering the assemblage with another sheet of dough. I then thought about the perfect fitting of dough around the roulade and opted to use the foodsaver to help shape these ravioli. The vaccum of the foodsaver allowed the pasta to shrink wrap around the pork-truffle cylinder to make a form fitted ravioli. Was my process worth the effort? I shall see in a bit, though I believe for a wrapping of flavored pasta around foie gras or sweetbreads this method will work great, form fitting and allowing for gentle cooking.
The miso noodles themselves will be used in several dishes, one with rock shrimp and perhaps our corn dashi while another with seared foie gras and fresh soy beans.
