Fresh Pappardelle With Swiss Chard, Onions, and Goat Cheese

This recipe was included on one of our CSA newsletters and has been sitting on the fridge ever since. It sounded good but just never came up. Until today, that is. Kerrie bought some goat cheese for another recipe so we had all of the ingredients on hand, which is always a good thing.

The original recipe is from Real Simple , the CSA variant used garlic scapes instead of the garlic cloves in the orginal. Since garlic scape season is over we used cloves tonight. I also chopped up a tomato and added it with the swiss chard for some extra color. Roasted red peppers would be an excellent addition as well.

I decided I had to make fresh pasta to go with it. Kerrie is typically the pasta maker in the house, outside of the occasional roux and a couple of my family's bread recipes, if it has flour in it, then it's her realm. Today I took a crack at it and was really pleased. I used the basic egg pasta recipe in  The Best Ever Pasta Cookbook: 200 Step-By-Step Pasta Recipes.

For a large batch (enough to serve 6-8 people) you need
2.5 cups of flour
4 eggs
pinch of salt

Make a well with the flour and crack your eggs into the middle. Using a fork slowly pull flour from the well into the eggs and mix. Once the mixture starts to form a dough, use your hands to mix it the rest of the way, incorporating more flour until it is no longer too sticky to handle. Set your dough ball aside and scrap up your work surface to be sure you have no dough residue, then add a coating of flour and knead the dough for about 10 minutes, pushing the ball away from you with the palm of your hand, scoop it up, turn it and push again, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Or you can take the dough ball and add it to your mixer with a dough hook attachment. You could do the whole thing in your mixer if you are so inclined but I do like working with my hands. Once it is all kneaded you can begin turning it into the noodles of your choice. I used the pasta roller attachment for our Kitchenaid, which is an awesome machine. You could certainly roll it by hand if you wanted to. Be sure to dust the rollers and the surface of the dough with flour before each pass; if the dough is breaking up, chances are it's too moist and is sticking (though your first inclination may be that it's too dry, so try dusting with flour first).

A dish like this suites the big fat ribbons of pappardelle perfectly, they get nicely coated  and really hold onto the delicious cheesy sauce. We used white whole wheat flour for the pasta.

Once your pasta is ready you can put it all together


Ingredients

• 12 ounces pappardelle or fettuccine
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 small red onion, thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 2 bunches Swiss chard, stems discarded and leaves cut into 1-inch strips
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 4 ounces fresh goat cheese, crumbled

Directions

1. Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Reserve 1 cup of the cooking water; drain the pasta and return it to the pot.
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the chard and ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper and cook, tossing frequently, until tender, 3 to 5 minutes more.
3. Add the chard mixture, 3 ounces of the goat cheese, ¾ cup of the reserved cooking water, and ½ teaspoon salt to the pasta and toss until the goat cheese melts and coats the pasta (add more cooking water if the pasta seems dry). Serve sprinkled with the remaining ounce of goat cheese.