Saturday, May 15, 2021

THE LATEST ADDITION TO THE RENFRO CULINARY REPETOIRE



I told my friend Nancy about my first week as lunch cook at The Crystal Cactus, the Hyatt's gourmet Restaurant back in 1982.
"My third day the chef came to me and said that the special tomorrow would be Cannelloni. I had no idea what that was, and had no intention of revealing my ignorance. There was no such thing as Google back then, so I went that evening to Barnes and Noble bookstore and found a recipe for Cannelloni's. The next morning I went in an hour early to do something I had never done before:
Make pasta from scratch and roll out the dough as thin as I could get it.
It sounded like it might be difficult, and there had been mention of a machine that would do it for you. It ended up being more difficult than it sounded, and I found out why old Italian women have big burly arms.
Never having made pasta dough I could only hope the consistency was close enough. I was rolling that dough pretty hard when the chef appeared at my side.
"What are you doing, Renfro?" he asked.
"Making cannelloni's, chef" I replied.
He reached into a cooler and pulled out a box of Eggroll wrappers. Genius!
"We usually just use these." he said "but its looks like you got it going."
The next week he showed me where they kept the pasta roller machine. There is a lesson here I think"
I told Nancy this story last weekend, and today came in the mail my new surprise Pasta Roller Noodle Making Machine.

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