Cocoa Farfalle with Hazelnut Pesto...and a Glass of Barolo

It’s never easy to say goodbye to summer. But September helps soften the blow. It’s my favorite month, the “bridge” month in which it’s perfectly fine to keep eating caprese salads and grilled flank steak, but also nice to pivot to something slightly richer that leans towards fall.

For me, that means hazelnuts. Hazelnuts are a September crop, in Italy and elsewhere, and they fittingly star in this slightly unconventional but wholly delicious pasta dish of homemade farfalle (bowties) tossed with a creamy basil-free pesto. Both the pasta dough and the hazelnut pesto are spiked with unsweetened cocoa, which imparts a lovely fall color to the farfalle and the faintest bittersweet tinge to the sauce.

This recipe is the result of a tasty collaboration with QB Cucina, an online purveyor of Italian pasta tools, and Wine365, a website that aims to help people better understand and enjoy wine. I was tasked with coming up with a pasta recipe using one of QB Cucina’s tools—I chose a double-headed fluted pasta cutter to make the farfalle—and to pair the recipe with a 2016 Michele Chiarlo Tortoniano Barolo, a big, elegant wine from Piemonte.

I admit to being something of a cliché when it comes to pairing food and wine, and by that I mean I usually leave it to my husband to choose the wine. But I was determined to crack this nut, so to speak, on my own (though he did serve as my official food & wine pairing taster). To that end, I put my trust in a favorite truism: what grows together goes together. Barolo, made from Nebbiolo grapes, is produced in the Langhe area of Piemonte; this same area, with its soft green hills, is also where the region’s best hazelnuts are grown (you can buy them online at Gustiamo). In this case, the truism served me well. The cocoa pasta and toasty pesto, rich in hazelnut oil and cream, stood up well to the wine’s tannins and structure.

If you get my newsletter, you already know about my love for Italian pasta tools (I wrote about it at length in the March issue). QB Cucina has some beauties, as well as other Italian kitchenware products for Italian food lovers, so be sure to click around. And if, like me, you’re not always confident about wine, check out Wine365, which is connected to Kobrand Corp., a New York-based global marketer of wine and spirits. The site offers lots of good seasonal wine and food pairings, plus solid advice on how to choose wine.

COCOA FARFALLE WITH HAZELNUT PESTO
The cocoa pasta is a simple riff on my basic egg pasta dough; the hazelnut pesto is a slight adaptation of a recipe in “Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances,” by Marlena De Blasi. Don’t be intimidated at the thought of shaping farfalle; they are simply little pasta rectangles that have been pinched together. You can view the technique on my Instagram feed.

Makes 4 generous servings

INGREDIENTS
For the pasta:
225 g “00” (about 1 1/2 cups) pasta flour or unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
75 g (about 2/3 cup) semola rimacinata (semolina flour), plus more for the work surface
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
3 large eggs

For the sauce:
1 1/2 cups toasted, skinned hazelnuts, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, plus more for serving
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon Cognac
Generous pinch fine sea salt, or to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
A dollop or two of fresh ricotta cheese (optional)

To serve: Michele Chiarlo Tortoniano Barolo DOCG 2016

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Make the pasta: Whisk together the flours and cocoa powder in a bowl. Dump out onto a clean work surface and make a wide well in the center. Break the eggs into the well and scramble them together with a fork. Begin to incorporate the flour, using the fork to bring in flour from the inside walls of the well. When the mixture is too thick to work with a fork, switch to your hands and begin to knead. Continue kneading for several minutes until you have a smooth, firm, and elastic ball of dough; sweep away any extra flour when the dough has reached the right consistency. If the dough is sticky, work in a little more “00” flour. Cover tightly and let rest for 60 minutes.

2. Set up a pasta machine and sprinkle semolina flour around the work surface. Cut the dough into four equal quarters and re-wrap three. With a rolling pin, roll the remaining piece into an oval thin enough to fit into the pasta machine. Set the pasta rollers to their widest setting (#1 on my Marcato Atlas) and feed the dough through. Fold the dough into thirds, to create a rectangle, and feed it through the first setting again. Repeat the folding once or twice more to set the rectangular shape of the dough. Move the rollers to the setting and run the dough through it twice (without folding). Continue to move the pasta rollers to progressively narrow settings until you have a long, thin sheet of dough, about 1/8-inch thick (#5 on my machine). Repeat the process with the remaining three pieces of dough, so that you end up with 4 long, thin sheets of pasta.

3. To make the classic “farfalle” (butterfly/bowtie) shape, use a fluted pasta/pastry cutter to trim the sheets; then cut each sheet into smallish rectangles, about 3 inches by 2 1/2 inches. Lay one of the small rectangles in front of you and place your index finger in the center. Use your thumb and middle fingers to pinch the long sides of the rectangle towards the center, removing your index finger at the last second to pinch and seal the edges together. Continue to pinch all the rectangles into farfalle. Set them on semolina-dusted trays as you go (make sure they are not touching to prevent them from sticking together).

4. Make the sauce: Combine all the sauce ingredients except the ricotta (if using) in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade and pulse to a coarse paste. Taste and add more salt, if necessary. Scrape the pesto into a bowl and stir in the ricotta, if using. Cover tightly.

5. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and salt it generously. Tip in the farfalle, stirring to separate them. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, until al dente (taste after 3 or 4 minutes; fresh pasta cooks quickly). Drain the pasta in a colander set in the sink, reserving about 1 cup of cooking water. Return the pasta to the pot and add 3 or 4 large dollops of pesto and a splash or two of cooking water. Toss gently to coat the pasta with the pesto; add more water if needed to loosen the sauce. Transfer the dressed pasta to a serving bowl or individual shallow bowls. Sprinkle with Parmigiano cheese and serve with the Barolo.