Rainbow Pasta Project

Welcome to the story of the rainbow pasta project. I haven't tuned a recipe of my own at this point, but I will link to the recipes I've referenced with notes on what challenges I encountered and the cutting / shaping process overall.

You eat with your eyes first, and while it's always true that beautiful presentation enhances a meal, for the kids it's a crucial element for enjoyment. I love having them engage with the making of food and appreciate the beauty in colors and flavors, so I welcome ideas they offer for the kitchen. This rainbow food phase started when the little one got her hands on the Unicorn Food book (non-affiliate link), which she likes to browse like a restaurant menu. One of the ideas in the book that I kept putting off was the rainbow farfalle, not just because pasta from scratch is a more involved undertaking, but because I knew I didn't want to use any food dyes so each of the 6 colors would need individual attention. In the end, I used 4 different recipes and made slight variations to suit my color needs, and I absolutely love how they turned out.

 First up, my all time favorite for quick home made pasta - the basic pasta dough recipe from Anne Burrell (find it here). The olive oil makes it silky and supple, and the eggs add just enough elasticity to make it fairly easy to work with, but not heavy like yolk-forward egg pasta doughs. I made two half batches, with one including beetroot powder for the red color and one with turmeric powder and a pinch of crushed saffron for the yellow colored dough. The fridge rest time is important in allowing the flour to properly hydrate and the dough to relax enough to roll out easily.

Next, I took on the purple and orange doughs - Japanese purple sweet potatoes and regular (orange) sweet potato baked whole in the oven until creamy were used. I found that the purple sweet potatoes had much lower water content and felt starchier in general, so while they needed a dash extra liquid from the recipe directions, the other ones needed quite a bit extra flour - next time I'll first squeeze them in a towel to remove some of that extra moisture first. I used this recipe as a starting point, and aimed for similar consistency to the basic egg pasta doughs from earlier in adjusting the liquid/flour amounts on the fly.

The blue dough was my only vegan dough (recipe) - since I used butterfly pea flowers infused in water (and reduced to concentrate the color) for the hue I wanted, I didn't need the additional liquid of the eggs. It took a bit more kneading to get the texture right on this one, the the protein from the eggs wasn't there to bind it as easily. It still turned out great in the end, and rolled just as well as the other colors.

Last but certainly not least, spinach was the star of the green pasta - I used an old copy of Saveur magazine that I saved in my recipe binder for the dough recipe (link). I chopped the spinach by hand, and while blending it may have resulted in more uniform color, I love the speckled look of the little spinach pieces give the dough. They do make rolling a bit more unwieldy, but it worked well enough. 

I played the shaping of the farfalle by ear/eye, but it's a pretty manually intensive process. I worked with one color at a time while the others continued to rest in the fridge, so they wouldn't dry out. I used the pasta roller attachment of my Kitchen Aid to make long sheets - starting with a few rolls and folds at the #1 setting to get the dough more supple and ready to roll thinner, then passing it through each number one by one until it felt thin enough to cut and shape - I stopped at #5 though #4 would have probably worked as well. Next, I used the wavy blade of my pie dough roller to cut each sheet (the width of the roller) in 3 long and equal strips, then I cut them across with the straight blade in 1" strips. Each ~2.5" by 1" rectangle got pinched in the middle to form that classic farfalle shape (farfalla means butterfly in Italian).

In the end, I only used about half of each color (so 1/4 recipe of each of the recipes I followed) to make farfalle, and decided I would try something else both for variation and ease for the rest. The amount of farfalle that I shaped was enough for 2 meals for our family of four. I rolled out the remaining dough to #5 thickness and passed it through the spaghetti cutter attachment. I used a good amount of flour to keep the strands separated, then put them on parchment in little nests and froze them to keep fresh for a later meal - the spaghetti was also enough for 2 good sized dinners, unsurprisingly.

Last but not least, I wanted to play around with pasta lamination as inspired by a pasta aficionado I admire on Instragram (account link). I probably took it a bit too far putting all 6 colors together, but if you look closely you can still see each individual color, which is so cool! I hand cut these and shaped them into cavatelli as I learned from Chef Keller's Masterclass. The dark colors and disproportionately tiny plate make them look a bit funny in the one picture I captured, but they were delicious and perfectly al dente :)

Overall, this was a pretty involved multi-day project, but the glimmer in the kids' eyes when seeing the colorful pasta was worth it. I really enjoyed how each of the colors had a distinctive flavor as well, and I still have some spaghetti in the freezer for a future meal awaiting me. Pictured above, turkey Lebanese meatballs with roasted mushrooms and a light cream sauce. Below simply buttered farfalle with a dose of fresh garlic served with a quick salad and oven roasted chicken and veggies.