Use foraged flowers to create this visually stunning wildflower mezza luna recipe.
Want to add colour and creativity to your regular old pasta? Pillage your kitchen garden or go urban foraging for edible flowers like blue corn flowers, pansies, calendula and borage flowers. And wonderful herbs like thyme, dill and fennel leaves.
You can experiment with different flower and herb combinations for added variety.
Wildflower Mezza Luna Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 quantity of your favourite fresh pasta dough
- Wildflowers
Method:
Make a quantity of pasta dough.
Harvest fresh edible flowers on the day you plan to use them: calendulas, nasturtiums, borage flowers, marigolds or roses can be used. Remove the petals and place in an airtight container.
Work the dough through the pasta maker to create long sheets, starting on the widest setting. Decide how thin you want the sheets to be, and therefore which number you plan to finish on.
As you work the dough through the machine, apply only just enough flour to stop it from sticking to the rollers and avoid making it dry.
As the pasta sheet gets longer, cut them in half.
Once you’ve reached the setting prior to the number you wish to finish on, stop to incorporate the edible flower petals.
Place the petal arrangement on half of the pasta sheet (don’t cut this half away from the flower petal half, leave it attached but unadorned). Leave a 1cm gap around each flower.
Once all petals have been arranged on one half of the pasta sheet, very lightly dampen the edges of that half, then take the unadorned half and fold it over the adorned half. Press the edges together and down on each of the flower areas.
Enlarge the roller gap to feed the folded pasta sheet through easily, working your way down to the thinness you require.
Using a round pastry cutter (about 85mm in diameter), cut the areas containing the edible flowers.
Keep the leftover pasta strips, squeeze them into a ball and run them through the pasta machine again to create more sheets. Fill each pasta circle with a filling of your choice. Fold the circle in half so that it creates a moon shape.
Cook in a clear vegetable or chicken stock to best appreciate the effet of the flowers.
Recipe and photographs: Mara Ripani, Village Dreaming.
