Amazingly Mdt and mktye pulled this off exactly as envisioned. A huge thanks for all the pre-planning and prep by both of them, (mdt making sample pasta batches and delicious ravioli fillings and mktye re-heating and stirring sauce batches literally for hours and making breadsticks, not to mention all the sauce making and set-up details by both) so many of us could experience pasta making for the first time, taste testing tomatoes, and sampling the results. Here are the first batch of photos. Just wish I had taken a photo of mdt's pb&j ravioli with whipped cream on top! Yum!

Bilrus tries his hand:


Electric pasta cranking:


Fun with flour and eggs:


Shogun gets crankhy:


Our results rest up:


Straight from the can taste test:


Sauce #1 taste test:


Putting it all together:


Mktye's breadsticks:


Non una goccia lasciata!

Wow. So much for paying extra for DOP! And Hunt's the clear winner. If you'd run a betting pool on the side, Mike, the house would have cleaned up...

Thanks to our host MDT and mktye for pulling this together and organizing it as well as they did. It was like a well oiled (or buttered) machine.

I had a great time and am pumped about making some delicate ravioli soon. I only wish I could have stuck around to taste my handiwaork yesterday.

Amazed that Hunt's won, but that is what I have in my pantry on a regular basis.

Which brand was the infamaous "Brand H" that almost universally caused people's eyes to bug out and say "Ughh."?

And it looks from the scores like the Hazan butter sauce was the clear winner over Batali's olive oil sauce. I didn't get to try the Batali sauce yesterday but this is usually my go-to sauce. That may be changing after yesterday.

Here are some pics:

And some more:

More thanks...

To mdt for opening his home to us and putting up with all my "help".

To all the participants for bringing their excellent palates and tasting 24(!) samples. You all were what made the tasting part of the day such a success.

And also for all those great sides that rounded out our eating... Crackers' charcuterie plate, Shogun's cheese plate, Laniloa's delicious grilled zucchini, cjsadler's wonderful caramelized onion/fennel crostini, Cresent Fresh's grating cheeses for the pasta, bilrus' tasty rosemary cake (which was also fantastic toasted for breakfast this morning!) and JG's much-appreciated tomato/mozzarella salad. And in his "spare" time, mdt also made scones, biscotti, chocolate cookies & ricotta cheesecakes -- all yummy and a perfect finish to the day.

More pictures...


mdt demonstrating the fine points of using a pasta roller


The tasting begins...


Raw samples ready to be tasted


The contenders

I'll add my thanks to mdt for his sponsorship of the first DR.com periodic taste test (it remains to be determined just how periodic these things will be) and to mktye for her painstaking devotion to detail and to both for all their hard work. The only thing the rest of us did was to show up, bring some alcohol and some extra food, and our palates. By my clock, the event lasted about 9 hours, from start to finish. (God, was mdt's kitchen pitted out).

And the infamous brand (joe) H was, the Flora San Marzano DOPs. I consistenly rated it the lowest of the 8. There was much speculation as to why the DOPs uniformly scored so lowly. Freshness was one possiblity, the DOPs have to travel from Italy in a container and perhaps that leads to a degradation of quality. But I, for one, will no longer be going the extra mile or wasting my money on imported tomatos or spending extra for San Marzanos, no matter where they are grown. I'll wait for the Hunt's to go on sale.

Thinking ahead to the next one of these, perhaps fresh mozzerela cheese. The question to be anwered "does the added expense of imported bufala mozzerela translate into added flavor, texture, etc,?"

Far out! You have performed a great service on behalf tomato sauce eaters everywhere.

What does the dry cleaning bill come to?

Coincindicentally, the dry cleaning bill is approximately equal to the wine tab; very high.

Individual scoring and a bit of data analysis (courtesy of Mr. mktye):

Raw Tomatoes Data
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Graphs of individual scores for the Raw Tomatoes
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Butter Sauce Data
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Graphs of individual scores for the Butter Sauce
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Olive Oil Sauce Data
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Graphs of individual scores for the Olive Oil Sauce
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mdt making it look easy

fortunately pastry bags were optional - we left ours at home.

Let me add to the chorus praising mdt and mktye for pulling off such a wonderful event. It was enlightening to all. Throughout the tasting you could hear people making a variety of interesting sounds as they contemplated the far greater range of difference then we all expected. While we all thought the raw tasting would showcase the difference we expected the sauce making process would cover a wider range of sins. It didn't. Thanks for the graphs mktye, they really highlight that some of the samples were bad to everyone (objectively bad) and others had a wide range of opinion (subjective). It reminds me of the discussion on the can you be too serious about food thread.

All in all a great day of tasting tomato, wine, pasta, and good conversation while very patient teachers helped us make fabulous pasta even with our best efforts to trash mdt's kitchen.

I just finished cranking out the rest of the dough that I brought home last night. mdt and mktye rock. thank you. The last time I had that much fun at a white powder party was about 1985.

I particularly would like to thank the person who really made it all possible -- mdt's grandma.

Sounds like a great idea! Count me in.

And how about after that, a taste test only for the strong of heart (literally), the daring, those with more nuts than a ventworm...

Yes, a day of tasting... bacon!

Would the bacon coming from deep-bedded, pampered piggies win out? And what about bacon smoked with wood only from organically farmed apple orchards? Or would the tastiest be the pumped full 'o chemicals, artificial-smoke-flavored bacon from hormone-injected pigs?

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

That is one damn good, no great idea. You gonna host JG?

Perhaps after the construction is finished.

I will pass along the praise to Mr. mktye -- it was his idea. He also proposed we should taste the bacon by itself, in BLT's and then in bacon cheeseburgers. And then eat all the leftover test bacon with garlic mashed potatoes and lots of sour cream!

But I don't know about waiting until JG's construction is finished... that could be a few years!

Date and bacon fritter taste-off! Different brands/kinds of dates and bacon, and a scoring matrix! The wonder, the excitement, the geekiness!

We can work out the where and when details later. In the meantime, what do I need to bring???!!!!

For starters, a home defibrillator might come in handy

I posted the results of my left over pasta dough here on the dinner thread.

I made papardelle by rolling the sheets of dough last night and cutting them sprinkled with corn meal. I put them in the water still rolled and most came unrolled, but not all. I'm thinking for the wider cuts I should unroll them first before going in teh water. But on the whole, much more delicate than I've made in the past.

Let the sheet dry more before rolling and cutting and they will unravel when you put them in the boiling water. Keep a dish towel over the sheets so that they do not dry too quickly.

Other than that you pasta was looking good. If you want silkier pasta try the Italian Style flour from King Arthur.

Just wanted to add my belated (Still no internet access, but FWIW I'm basically done moving!) thanks to MDT and Mktye for the awesome day! I had a really great time...we need to do things like this more often! I'm definitely going to need a pasta machine for the new place!

You guys rule! Viva DR.com!

I just received my July e-notes from Cook's Illustrated. It said that the September/October issue will have a test of canned tomatoes with American brands beating the Italians. Of course, that's old news to us!

Alright, who's the plant?

Just thought I would bring this post back up to the top as Cook's Illustrated just published their review of canned tomatoes.

The top 3 were Progresso Whole w/Basil, RedPack, and Hunt's. It looks like we did a pretty good job overall.

More info here:
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A word of warning:

When rolling pasta (especially when one is in a hurry) with a pasta machine with a removable handle, it is prudent to ensure the handle is fully seated in the body of the machine before madly cranking on it. Not doing so can result in the handle flying out of the machine, out of one's hand and into one's face , which can subsequently result in a nasty bruise, a semi-black eye and abundant muffled wimpering (so as to not awaken napping house guests).