Chlorophyll Pasta

Chriesi’s newly published pasta recipe with the spotless green pasta, and especially her comment that it was not really troublesome to isolate the chlorophyll, encouraged me to try it. I remember well Robert’s post of 2008 with the instructions, quoted by Chriesi, and I also remember how I admired Robert for his diligence to go through such a procedure just to get green pasta, or “greener” pasta. Anyway, I did it this evening.

To the green tagliatelle, I served new small carrots, from thinning out, fennel, also from the garden, and sweet corn from the shop. The pasta are just with a few flakes of butter, parmigiano shavings, salt and pepper.

This is the chlorophyll paste extracted from 200 g of carrot greens. I followed Robert’s description, only that I did not run the blender until it broke, as he suggested. The blending until it was a soup was the troublesome part, even with the K, adding a bit more water helped a lot.

I ran the soup through a gauze for fiber removal, then heated the juice slowly and filtered the agglomerated chlorophyll through a tea sieve.

Of the carrot greens, I used the upper part with the fine leaves only, and threw the stems away, not because they were not all right, but I didn’t expect too much chlorophyll in them.

The pasta dough consists of 480 g flower plus 4 eggs and 45 g chlorophyll paste. It takes a bit of kneading until the dough is evenly greenish. It may be easier to beat the eggs together with the chlorophyll before adding the mix to the flour.

I used my 35 years old pasta “machine”, made sheets to pos. 4 of 6, then run them through the noodle cutter.

The noodles were excellent, but no different from other times I made them in natural color. Their look, however, was fantastic, really spotless, a smooth uniform green. Preparing the chlorophyll paste is not worth the pain for somebody who enjoys more with the taste buds than with the eye. However, if color combo and taste are asked for: yes, and it’s great fun.

Addendum
For the benefit of the non-German speaking readers, here the procedure for preparing the chlorophyll paste following lamiacucina’s blog, but with my quantities:

Put 200 g edible greens, best with lots of chlorophyll, as spinach or other, finely chopped, together with 750 ml water into the blender and cut until it is soupy, very fine (or until the blender breaks, as Robert suggested). Strain it through a fine sieve or gauze, to separate the liquid from the fiber fraction. Slowly heat the liquid in a large pan, to keep the liquid shallow, and stir carefully, best monitor the temperature with a thermometer. At around 70 to 80 deg C, the chlorophyll starts to agglomerate, above 90 deg C take the pan off the heater, don’t let it boil. Sieve through a fine tea sieve to collect the chlorophyll paste. After build-up of a filter layer by the first particles, the juice leaves almost clear, and the first little filtrate with particles can be recycled into the sieve again.

Background Music

Dire Straits, Love Over Gold, 1982

Yellow Almost Thai Veggie Curry

During my bicycle trip I learned to appreciate one-pot dishes, as with one fire you can only have one pot heated at a time. And at home it reduces the number of pots to be cleaned after cooking dramatically; a nice side effect, although I have the habit to clean pots and pans immediately after use, while I am still cooking.

This dish I did for several reasons: there was another zucchini from the already starting avalanche of zucchinis (courgettes) in the garden, there were potatoes in the cellar that didn’t look that good anymore, and my potato harvest is around the corner, there was a tofu in the fridge well over its date, and finally, I had found a yellow Thai curry paste at Lidl which is absolutely up to European standards, quite tasty, though not as hot and not as crispy as real Thai paste.

Yellow almost Thai veggie curry

Ingredients
1 onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1-2 TS yellow curry paste
1 red chili, of the large type, 15 cm long
500 ml coconut milk
5 kaffir lime leaves
5 small potatoes
1 medium size courgette (zucchini)
250 g (1 1/3 cups) whole buckwheat kernels
250 g (1 1/3 cups) red lentils
250 g stiff whiteish tofu
1 cup self-made vegetable broth (frozen)
coriander leaves, a lot
salt

Heat a pot, add corn oil (or other), add onion, then garlic, curry paste, and all up to the zucchini, and a while later the lentils and the buckwheat, towards the end the coriander leaves. Add water if needed, salt to taste. Serve with some salad.

Above quantities are for 4 good eaters, depending, of course.

Accompanying Music

Mark Knopfler, Sailing to Philadelphia

Farnham to Switzerland by Bicycle

It was a gift for me to spend 2 weeks with my son Mario cycling from Farnham, Surrey, to Switzerland, and I am grateful for this experience. He and Lea had been living in the UK for 18 months, and Mario wanted to cycle back, whereas Lea returned with her father and their belongings by VW Transporter.

On the first day, we rode southeast, for a while accompanied by Mario’s boss Darryl, passed Brighton, still enjoying nice weather, perfect for cycling.

Should I have taken the no cycling sign serious? At crowded times I surely would.

Are these huts rented out on long lease for storing beach furniture and such?

Somewhere on the way through the countryside, before Brighton, we passed by a polo tournament. My only polo match that I had so far watched was in Leh, Ladakh, close to the region where polo originated.

A dish of whelks in Folkestone, only missing a pint of beer.

Trip Summary

29.04.10	Test ride Kaltenbach – Schönholzerswilen	33 km
30.04.10	Schönholzerswilen to Farnham by VW Transporter
01.05.10	Farnham – Brighton – Blyth	95 km
02.05.10	Blyth – Rye	80 km
03.05.10	Rye – Dover – Calais (F)	68 km
04.05.10	Calais – Nieuwpoort (B)	95 km
05.05.10	Nieuwpoort – Brugge – Geraardsbergen (B)	118 km
06.05.10	Gerardsbeergen – Namur	90 km
07.05.10	Namur – La Gleize (Ardennes)	111 km
08.05.10	La Gleize – Ulmen (D)	110 km
09.05.10	Ulmen – Cochem (Mosel) – Koblenz – Bacharach	128 km
10.05.10	Bacharach – Bingen – Rüdesheim – Worms	112 km
11.05.10	Worms – Speyer – Seltz (F)	139 km
12.05.10	Seltz – Strasbourg – Marckolsheim (F)	118 km
13.05.10	Marckolsheim – Basel (CH)	86 km
14.05.10	Basel – Paradies	103 km
	Total	1486 km

Calais Campground, after we had crossed the Channel by ferry, was our first night in the tent. In England the bad weather had pushed us to indoor accommodation.

I did a test cooking at home with my new fantastic Primus multi-fuel stove, perfect. It accepts gas, unleaded, diesel, and even olive oil, as fuel. We cooked with unleaded gasoline. Buying gas was fun, pump no. 3, aha, 89 Cents!?

The walls of Graveline, France, a fortified star-shaped old town, with walls and water all around.

Brügge/Bruges market place.

3 km up, 3 km down, 5 km up, 2 km down, and so on, through the Ardennes of Belgium and Eifel in Germany.

We cycled 14 days without a break, in good and bad weather, slept 8 times in the tent, once at a B&B, 3 times at a hotel, and once at Leo’s, a friend of Mario’s in Basel.

My stuff was in 2 panniers at the rear, 2 panniers on the low rider rack, a bar bag, and a large roll with the tent and sleeping bag. In the front panniers were the kitchen equipment and the food, in the back panniers my clothes and other stuff. Mario cycled with his racer and could not take too much weight, although we switched for some days his roll with mine, which gave me some relief.

It was often very cold, for a few days 8 to 10 deg C, even in the afternoon.

Winningen, Mosel (D)

Container vessel on Rhine River.

Tourist boats are prepared for the summer season.

For miles we followed the wonderful Rhine dykes, actually the second spare dykes in the woods, great riding, no hills

Weights of luggage and bicycle
Do you know how much you can check-in for a flight in economy?
20 kg, and the suitcase is heavy!!

2 rear panniers	10.0 kg
2 front panniers	5.2 kg
bar bag	2.8 kg
roll with tent, sleeping bag, mat, ..	8.4 kg
bicycle	15.2 kg
Total	41.6 kg

Writing in the diary, quite a nice evening somewhere in Germany. Camping pleasure, though not too warm, still.

Kaiserdom (emperor’s cathedral) at Speyer, a major monument of Romanesque art.

The cathedral was constructed 1030 to 1061 a.c., imagine the tools they had at that time.

25 km we cycled along Rhône-Rhine Canal, built from 1784 to 1833.

We had some problems with the bikes. I had 3 punctures in one day in Belgium, all originating from the same cause: one of the rims had an internal crack, pinching the inner tube. After the 2nd puncture I realized it and put some cardboard from a nearby waste basket with duct tape on the crack, but it happened a 3rd time due to a weak bonding of the repair patch. Each time we had to stop, disassemble the wheel, pull off the tire, repair the inner tube, and put all together again, not to mention the pumping with a small travel pump.

Mario rode his vintage racer of the famous Italian Gios brand. The rear rim showed a crack at the side, from breaking abrasion over the years. As the bike shop did only sell wheel sets, he exchenged both front and rear wheel somewhere in Belgium. My first puncture was in fact just a few hundred meters before we reached the bike shop that we had looked up in our guide book.

And yes, on the first day, before even reaching the sea, the chain on Mario’s bike broke and we fixed it, quite a troublesome exercise. A 100 meters further up the road, we passed a bike shop and bought a new chain. Why had we not asked for the nearest bike shop?

Rain, again. On the second last day, shortly before reaching Basel, Switzerland.

This meant the end of my trip, 15 km short of reaching home. Mario rode home while I had to be fetched by car.

Ironically, the location where it happened is called Paradies (paradise), hence, the heading could be “From Farnham to Paradise”.

I had a great time, despite the cold and the rain, and I know that Mario enjoyed it, too. It really was an experience. Thank you, Mario.

The last longer cycling trips I did were from Manali to Leh in Northern India in 1998 and from Auckland to Queenstown in 1992.