East Texas Gourmands

East Texas Gourmands
This blog was created for 8 generous patrons of the Texas Shakespeare Festival that is held in Kilgore Texas and celebrating its 25th season. The patrons combined their love of theater and food by purchasing cooking lessons at a benefit for the festival. Recipes and photographs from the lessons will be placed on this blog. Sit back with a good glass of wine and have a feast with your eyes. Bon Appetite - or as we say in East Texas - Lezz Eat!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Lesson One

Tonight you learned how to make fresh pasta by hand using a hand crank pasta machine and the original Caesar Salad.

Pasta is an unleavened dough formed from a liquid (eggs and/or water) mixed with a flour (wheat, buckwheat, rice or other grains or a combination of grains) and cut or extruded into tubes, ribbons and other shapes; flavorings such as herbs, spices and vegetables (ex. tomatoes and spinach) can be added to the dough; pasta is usually boiled and served with a sauce.


The Classic Caesar Salad  is generally attributed to restaurateur Caesar Cardini (an Italian-born Mexican).Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana where he avoided the restrictions of Prohibition. Cardini invented the dish when a Fourth of July 1924 rush on the restaurant depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of the table-side tossing "by the chef".  In the original recipe, lettuce leaves are served whole on the plate, because they are meant to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers.  The croutons are made fresh using whole slices of baguette.

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