We’ve been tinkering with red these past few days in anticipation of tomorrow’s red dinner, and we thought we’d share some of our successes (and failures!) A visual sneak peak, of sorts.

First up: friend & fellow dinner guest Gabbi called on us for some moral
support in her quest to make colored pasta. She’d made a homemade pasta rack, and everything:

We tried roasted red peppers first – pureed – with three cups of flour, two whole eggs, and enough puree to make it work.

Turns out, roasted red peppers are actually…orange. Ah well. October?

Next experiment – beets, again, pureed. A little on the fuchsia side (and pink when cooked, we later discovered!) but closer.

We decided to try tomatoes in one last attempt for truly red pasta, and in our research came across Francis Lam’s post on homemade tomato paste. His talk of homemade tomato paste was so poetic, so magnificent, that we just had to try it for ourselves.

We started at 4:30pm, pureeing tomatoes to get to this:

And ended a 9pm with this:

Francis lied. In his post, he alludes to a total time of three hours, prep included. Granted, he started with 3lbs of tomatoes and we started with, um, 5lbs…Otherwise, his recipe is spot on (we didn’t strain the tomatoes, but did add a touch of garlic and onion) and OH EM GEE, he isn’t kidding. This stuff IS bomb. We might never go back to the canned stuff again.

And, look what we found at Migliorelli Farm! A perfect surprise touch for
our red antipasto. Can you guess what they are?

Stay tuned for a visual recap of Sunday’s feast!